all sorts were written by himself; he was most particular about this.

One day a sporting nobleman visited the gallery with his huntsman, whose naïve and knowing criticisms greatly amused his master. At last, coming to one of the favourite hunting pictures, he said, 'Ah! my Lord, nothin' but a party as knows 'osses cud have draw'd them 'ere 'unters.' The origin and means of these sketches in oil is curious. Mr. Leech had often been asked to undertake works of this character, but he had for so many years been accustomed to draw with the pencil, and that only on small blocks, that he had little confidence in his ability to draw on a large scale. The idea originated with Mr. Mark Lemon, his friend and colleague, who saw that by a new invention a beautiful piece of machinery-the impression of a block in Punch, being first taken on a sheet of india-rubber, was enlarged; when, by a lithographic process, the copy thus got could be transferred to the stone, and impressions printed upon a large sheet of canvas. Having thus obtained an outline groundwork consisting of his own lines enlarged some eight times the area of the original block, Leech proceeded to colour these. His knowledge of the manipulation of oil colours was very slight, and it was under the guidance of his friend, John Everett Millais, that his first attempts were made, and crude enough they were. He used a

kind of transparent colour which allowed the coarse lines of the enlargement to show through, so that the production presented the appearance of indifferent lithographs, slightly tinted. In a short time, however, he obtained great mastery over oil colour, and instead of allowing the thick fatty lines of printers' ink to remain on the canvas, he, by the use of turpenține, removed the ink, particularly with regard to the lines of the face and figure. These he re drew with his own hand in a fine and delicate manner. Το this he added a delicacy of finish, particularly in flesh colour, which greatly enhanced the value and beauty of his later works. To any one acquainted with these sketches, we may mention for illustration of these remarks, No. 65 in the Catalogue. This work presents all the incompleteness and crudity of his early style. The picture represents Piscator seated on a wooden fence on a raw morning in a pelting shower of rain, the lines necessary to give the effect of a leaden atmosphere being very numerous and close. The works which illustrated his later style are best shown in Nos. 36 and 41. In the framing of these sketches he persisted in leaving a margin of white canvas somewhat after the manner of water-colour sketches.

Of all art satirists none have such a pervading sense and power of girlish and ripe womanly beauty Hogarth alone, as in his Poor Poet's

as Leech.

Wife, comes near him. There is a genuine domesticity about his scenes that could come only from a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. You see he is himself paterfamilias, with no Bohemian taint or raffish turn. What he draws he has seen. What he asks you to live in and laugh at and with, he has laughed at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness, and, to use the right word, this goodness, that makes Leech more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even than a great artist. It makes him a teacher and an example of virtue in its widest sense, from that of manliness to the sweet devotion of woman, and the loving, open mouth and eyes of parvula on your knee. How different is the same class of art in France! you dare not let your wife or girls see their Leech; he is not for our virgins and boys. Hear what Thackeray says on this point :

'Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his comments upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a description of his own country of France, in a thousand brilliant pages, and it is a task not a little amus

It is honourable to the regular art of this country that many of its best men early recognised in Leech a true brother. Millais and Elmore and others were his constant friends; and we know that more than twelve years ago Sir George Harvey wished to make Leech and Thackeray honorary members of The Royal Scottish Academy [1865].

ing and curious for a student of manners to note the difference between the two satirists-perhaps between the societies which they describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by noble elderly squires, riding large-boned horses, followed across country by lovely beings of the most gorgeous proportions, by respectful retainers, by gallant little boys emulating the courage and pluck of the sire. The joke is the precocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he charges at his fences, his coolness as he eyes the glass of port or tells grandpapa that he likes his champagne dry. How does Gavarni represent the family-father, the sire, the old gentleman in his country, the civilised country? Paterfamilias, in a dyed wig and whiskers, is leering by the side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the Rue de Bréda; Paterfamilias, with a mask and a nose halfa-yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The enfant terrible is making Papa and Mamma alike ridiculous by showing us Mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting against the seventh commandment. The old man is for ever hunting after the young woman, the wife is for ever cheating the husband. The fun of the old comedy never seems to end in France; and we have the word of their own satirists, novelists, painters of society, that it is being played from day to day.

In the works of that barbarian artist Hogarth, the subject which affords such playful sport to the civilised Frenchman is stigmatised as a fearful crime, and is visited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never thinks of such a crime as funny, and a hundred years after Hogarth, our modern "painter of mankind," still retains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, decorous before women, has never once thought that he had a right or calling to wound the modesty of either.

'Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentleman's point of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerroid lived and wrote for that celebrated periodical, he took the other side: he looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, sarcastic aspect, and a threatening posture; and his outcry or challenge was—" Ye rich and great, look out! We, the people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, wallowing on a tithe-pig, and rolling in carriages and four; ye landlords grinding the poor; ye vulgar fine ladies bullying innocent governesses, and what not, we will expose your vulgarity, we will put down your oppression, we will vindicate the nobility of our common nature," and so forth. A great deal is to be said on the Jerrold side; a great deal was said; perhaps even a great deal too much. It is not a little curious to speculate upon the works of these two famous contributors of Punch, these two "preachers," as the phrase is.