served Mr. Punch admirably. Time was, if we remember Mr. P.'s history rightly, that he did not wear silk stockings nor well-made clothes (the little dorsal irregularity in his figure is almost an ornament now, so excellent a tailor has he). He was of humble beginnings. It is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put up at corners of streets; associated with beadles, policemen, his own ugly wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and persons in a low station of life; earning a precarious livelihood by the cracking of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and half-pence extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius we spoke of anon: he cracks his jokes still, for satire must live; but he is combed, washed, neatly clothed, and perfectly presentable. He goes into the very best company; he keeps a stud at Melton; he has a moor in Scotland; he rides in the Park; has his stall at the Opera; is constantly dining out at clubs and in private society; and goes every night in the season to balls and parties, where you see the most beautiful women possible. He is welcomed amongst his new friends the great; though, like the good old English gentleman of the song, he does not forget the small. He pats the heads of street boys and girls; relishes the jokes of Jack the costermonger and Bob the dustman; good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting with policeman X, or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating guardsman. He used rather to laugh at guardsmen, "plungers," and other military men; and was until latter days very contemptuous in his behaviour towards Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swagger, and fierce demeanour. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and the dandies of "The Rag" dandies no more are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann1 by the side of 1 This was written in 1854.

their heroic allies, Mr. Punch's laughter is changed to hearty respect and enthusiasm. It is not against courage and honour he wars: but this great moralist — must it be owned? has some popular British prejudices, and these led him in peace time to laugh at soldiers and Frenchmen. If those hulking footmen who accompanied the carriages to the opening of Parliament the other day, would form a plush brigade, wear only gunpowder in their hair, and strike with their great canes on the enemy, Mr. Punch would leave off laughing at Jeames, who meanwhile remains among us, to all outward appearance regardless of satire, and calmly consuming his five meals per diem. Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and authorities, Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of the Papal aggression he was prodigiously angry; and one of the chief misfortunes which happened to him at that period was that, through the violent opinions which he expressed regarding the Roman Catholic hierarchy, he lost the invaluable services, the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy of Mr. Doyle. Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of Jeames, the author of the "Snob Papers," resigned his functions on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse. Mr. Punch parted with these contributors: he filled their places with others as good. The boys at the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheerily, and sold just as many numbers, after these events as before.

There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures! What would you give for it? The learned gentlemen who write the work must feel that, without him, it were as well left

alone. Look at the rivals whom the popularity of Punch has brought into the field; the direct imitators of Mr. Leech's manner the artists with a manner of their own — how inferior their pencils are to his in humour, in depicting the public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. The truth, the strength, the free vigor, the kind humour, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man. What plump young

beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs, on the back of them, scampers across country! You see youth, strength, enjoyment, manliness in those drawings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design. Like a brave, hearty, goodnatured Briton, he becomes quite soft and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles come home from Eton; young Miss practising her first flirtation; poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who is as big as herself— all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious nicety by this amiable observer.

We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, a print which used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spectators, and in which the Prince of Wales (his Royal Highness was a Foxite then) was represented as sitting alone in a magnificent hall after a voluptuous meal, and using a great steel fork in the guise of a tooth

pick. Fancy the first young gentleman living employing such a weapon in such a way! The most elegant Prince of Europe engaged with a two-pronged iron fork - the heir of Britannia with a bident! The man of genius who drew that picture saw little of the society which he satirised and amused. Gilray watched public characters as they walked by the shop in St. James's Street, or passed through the lobby of the House of Commons. His studio was a garret, or little better; his place of amusement a tavern-parlour, where his club held its nightly sittings over their pipes and sanded floor. You could not have society represented by men to whom it was not familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few years since—one of the wittiest of men, one of the most brilliant and dexterous of draughtsmen - he published a book of "Les Anglais," and his Anglais were all Frenchmen. The eye, so keen and so long practised to observe Parisian life, could not perceive English character. A social painter must be of the world which he depicts, and native to the manners which he portrays.

Now, any one who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries we enter; what fine young-gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies who wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for an anchovy toast with the claret; who talk together in ball-room doors, where Fred whispers Charley - pointing to a dear little partner seven years old "My dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl last season!" Look well at everything appertaining to the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs: how snug, quiet,

What a com

appropriate all the appointments are! fortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Briggs's is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good stable he has, with a loose box for those celebrated hunters which he rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room: Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks; the children clustering round a great book of prints a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The inner life of all these people is represented: Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. It is your house and mine: we are looking at everybody's family circle. Our boys coming from school give themselves such airs, the young scapegraces! our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such, future students — lucky they to have a book so pleasant-will regard these pages: even the mutations of fashion they may follow here if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye for tailory and millinery as for horse-flesh. How they change those cloaks and bonnets. How we have to pay milliners' bills from year to year! Where are those prodigious châtelaines of 1850 which no lady could be without? Where those charming waistcoats, those "stunning" waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few brief seasons back, and which cause