sex or any age. Here and there a good-natured cabby, a jolly navvy, a simple-minded flautist or bagpiper, or a little street Arab, like the small boy who pointed out the jail doctor to his pal and said, "That's my medical man."

Whereas Leech's pages teem with winning, graceful, lovable types, and here and there a hateful one to give relief.

But, somehow, one liked the man who drew these strange people, even without knowing him; when you knew him you loved him very much—so much that no room was left in you for envy of his unattainable mastery in his art. For of this there can be no doubt—no greater or more finished master in black and white has devoted his life to the illustration of the manners and humours of his time; and if Leech is even greater than he—and I for one am inclined to think he is—it is not as an artist, but as a student and observer of human nature, as a master of the light, humorous, superficial criticism of life.

[Illustration: "NOT UP TO HIS BUSINESS"

CROSS BUS DRIVER. "Now why didn't you take that there party?"

CONDUCTOR: "Said they wouldn't go."

CROSS BUS DRIVER. "Said THEY wouldn't go? THEY said they wouldn't go? Why, what do you suppose you're put there for? You call that conductin' a buss. Oh! THEY wouldn't go! I like that, &c., &c."— Punch, September 1, 1860.]

Charles Keene died of general atrophy on January 4, 1891. It was inexpressibly pathetic to see how patiently, how resignedly he wasted away; he retained his unalterable sweetness to the last.

His handsome, dark-skinned face, so strongly lined and full of character; his mild and magnificent light-grey eyes, that reminded one of a St. Bernard's; his tall, straight, slender aspect, that reminded one of Don Quixote; his simplicity of speech and character; his love of humour, and the wonderful smile that lit up his face when he heard a good story, and the still more wonderful wink of his left eye when he told one—all these will remain strongly impressed on the minds of those who ever met him.

I attended his funeral as I had attended Leech's twenty-six years before; Canon Ainger, a common friend of us both, performed the service. It was a bitterly cold day, which accounted for the sparseness of the mourners compared to the crowd that was present on the former occasion; but bearing in mind that all those present were either relations or old friends, all of them with the strongest and deepest personal regard for the friend we had lost, the attendance seemed very large indeed; and all of us, I think, in our affectionate remembrance of one of the most singularly sweet-natured, sweet-tempered, and simple-hearted men that ever lived, forgot for the time that a very great artist was being laid to his rest.

[Illustration: GEORGE DU MAURIER

From an unpublished photograph by Fradelle and Young, London.]

And now, in fulfilment of my contract, I must speak of myself—a difficult and not very grateful task. One's self is a person about whom one knows too much and too little—about whom we can never hit a happy medium. Sometimes one rates one's self too high, sometimes (but less frequently) too low, according to the state of our digestion, our spirits, our pocket, or even the weather!

In the present instance I will say all the good of myself I can decently, and leave all the rating to you. It is inevitable, however unfortunate it may be for me, that I should be compared with my two great predecessors, Leech and Keene, whom I have just been comparing to each other.

When John Leech's mantle fell from his shoulders it was found that the garment was ample to clothe the nakedness of more than one successor.

John Tenniel had already, it is true, replaced him for several years as the political cartoonist of Punch. How admirably he has always filled that post, then and ever since, and how great his fame is, I need not speak of here. Linley Sambourne and Harry Furniss, so different from each other and from Tenniel, have also, since then, brought their great originality and their unrivalled skill to the political illustrations of Punch—Sambourne to the illustration of many other things in it besides, but which do not strictly belong to the present subject.

I am here concerned with the social illustrators alone, and, besides, only with those who have made the sketches of social subjects in Punch the principal business of their lives. For very many artists, from Sir John Millais, Sir John Gilbert, Frederick Walker, and Randolph Caldecott downward, have contributed to that fortunate periodical at one time or another, and not a few distinguished amateurs.

Miss Georgina Bowers, Mr. Corbould, and others have continued the fox-hunting tradition, and provided those scenes which have become a necessity to the sporting readers of Punch.

To Charles Keene was fairly left that part of the succession that was most to his taste—the treatment of life in the street and the open country, in the shops and parlours of the lower middle class, and the homes of the people.

And to me were allotted the social and domestic dramas, the nursery, the school-room, the dining and drawing rooms, and croquet-lawns of the more or less well-to-do.

I was particularly told not to try to be broadly funny, but to undertake the light and graceful business, like a jeune premier. I was, in short, to be the tenor, or rather the tenorino, of that little company for which Mr. Punch beats time with his immortal baton, and to warble in black and white such melodies as I could evolve from my contemplations of the gentler aspect of English life, while Keene, with his magnificent, highly trained basso, sang the comic songs.

We all became specialised, so to speak, and divided Leech's vast domain among us.

We kicked a little at first, I remember, and whenever (to continue the musical simile) I could get in a comic song, or what I thought one, or some queer fantastic ditty about impossible birds and beasts and fishes and what not, I did not let the opportunity slip; while Keene, who had a very fine falsetto on the top of his chest register, would now and then warble, pianissimo, some little ballad of the drawing-room or nursery.

Illustration: FELINE AMENITIES

But gradually we settled into our respective grooves, and I have grown to like my little groove very much, narrow though it be—a poor thing, but mine own!

"I_wish_ you hadn't asked Captain Wareham, Lizzie. Horrid man! I can't bear him!"

"Dear me, Charlotte—isn't the world big enough for you both?"

"Yes; but your little Dining-room isn't!"—Punch, February 16, 1889.]

Moreover, certain physical disabilities that I have the misfortune to labour under make it difficult for me to study and sketch the lusty things in the open air and sunshine. My sight, besides being defective in many ways, is so sensitive that I cannot face the common light of day without glasses thickly rimmed with wire gauze, so that sketching out of doors is often to me a difficult and distressing performance. That is also partly why I am not a sportsman and a delineator of sport.

I mention this infirmity not as an excuse for my shortcomings and failures—for them there is no excuse—but as a reason why I have abstained from the treatment of so much that is so popular, delightful, and exhilarating in English country life. If there had been no Charles Keene (a terrible supposition both for Punch and its readers), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks and phases of London existence, which attracts me as