Probably very few of our readers have seen this despised and rejected plate of _Rose Maylie and Oliver_, for it is not the one which bears that title among the ordinary illustrations to the novel of "Oliver Twist." It is very rare, and we wish we could reproduce it here. If not one of the very best of the series, it is entirely in keeping with the rest; and so far from displaying "great haste," is in every respect a carefully finished book etching. Four figures are represented in it as sitting round the fire, among them the well known form of Oliver, with his turn-down collar and elaborately brushed hair. On the mantle-shelf, with other ornaments, are two hyacinths in glasses, thus fixing January as the date of the scene depicted. It would have been better for the book if Charles Dickens had left it alone. The artist did as he was requested, with anger at his heart; and as a consequence, Rose Maylie will go down to posterity as the ugliest of George Cruikshank's very ugly women, in an outrageous bonnet, with her hand resting on the shoulder of a youth wearing the singular coatee or boy's jacket of forty years ago. Differing altogether from the admirable designs which preceded it, there is an incongruity about the etching which cannot fail to impress the observer. The unfortunate letter and still more unfortunate result occasioned a coolness between the men which was never wholly removed. From that time forth George Cruikshank executed no more designs for Charles Dickens, and the illustrations to the long series of novels which afterwards followed from the pen of the talented but distinctly autocratic author were entrusted to other hands. However much this result must be deplored so far as the artist himself is concerned, the coolness between Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank is scarcely to be viewed in the light of a misfortune for English illustrative art. Only consider for one moment what might have followed had the artist executed the designs to the rest of Dickens's novels! Dick Swiveller would have suited him, and so would Quilp, or Sampson Brass, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, Newman Noggs, Lord Frederick Verisopht, Captain Bunsby, or even Mr. Pecksniff himself; but only fancy, on the other hand, the _horrors_ which would have been made of Dolly Varden, of Edith Dombey, of "Little Em'ly," of dear, gentle, loving little Nell! Happily for the fame of George Cruikshank, his imagination was not called into requisition for any one of these creations, and like the "annunciations," the "beatifications," and the "apotheoses" of Lockhart, they remain (we are thankful to say it) still unrealized!