THE year which has just passed opened sadly with the death of William Makepeace Thackeray; before it closed, John Leech was laid by the side of his schoolfellow, his friend, and his fellow-labourer. There was hardly a household in the United Kingdom over which a gloom was not cast by the tidings of his death-a Christmas hearth round which he was not mourned, or whose brightness was not dimmed by his loss. It was as if an old

familiar face were missed, a friendly voice hushed. The kindliest of moralists, the gentlest of satirists, was no more; but the spirit that had so lately fled seemed still to linger round the Christmas-tree, to mingle in the sports it had loved so well, to wreathe itself in the smiles and float on the sweet laughter of childhood, and to hover lovingly

over the scenes it had so often rendered immortal.

All that the world has a right to ask of the personal history of John Leech has been already told. That he was originally destined for the medical profession; that in obedience to the strong promptings of genius he early abandoned it; that his life was pure and noble; that he was beloved by friends, and those nearer and dearer than friends,this is all we are entitled to know, and it is enough.

As has been the case with almost all great humorists, there was a vein of melancholy in the character of Leech. "Our sweetest songs

are

those that tell of saddest thought;" and this tone of mind seems to be as inseparable from genius as the plaintive strains are from that music "which wakes our tears ere smiles have left us."

The lines in which the character of a lamented statesman have been so vividly drawn in these pages might with truth have been applied to the artist :

No heart more facile to arouse or melt,High as a knight's in some Castilian lay, And tender as a sailor's in a play.”

dignation flashed forth in eloquence Silent, gentle, forbearing, his inwhen roused by anything mean or ungenerous. Manly in all his

thoughts, tastes, and habits, there

was about him an almost feminine bedside and smooth the pillow of tenderness. He would sit by the a sick child with the gentleness of idol of those around him; but it is a woman. No wonder he was the the happiness of such a life that there is so little to be told of it.

In an article upon the Public Schools of London, which appeared about four years ago in the pages of 'Once a Week, the following passage occurs in the description of the Charterhouse :

"We strolled out into the green again, which is so large that one portion of it forms an excellent cricketwalls, and is overlooked from the upper ground. It is surrounded by high windows of the houses in the adjacent streets. J. mentioned to me a story of a young Carthusian's mother, which was, I thought, touching enough. She had sent her little boy, then a mere It had cost child, to this huge school.

her many a pang to part with him; but, as she was a lady of good sense as well as of gentle heart, she resolved to abstain from visiting him at his boarding-house. She knew it was right that he should be left to take his chance with the others, and she had sufficient strength of mind not to sacrifice his future welfare to the indulgence of her own affection. See him, however, she would, but in such a way that the child could not see her. She therefore hired

a room in one of the houses which com

manded a view of the Carthusian play ing-ground; and here she would sit behind a blind, day after day, happy and content so that she could get a glimpse of her child. Sometimes she would see him strolling about with his arm round the neck of one of his little companions, as the way of schoolboys is; sometimes he was playing and jump: ing about with childish glee; but still the mother kept her watch. You may see the place where she did it. Look yonder, that upper window, just beside the gold-beater's arm."

The boy in this story was John Leech. How much of the mingled firmness and tenderness of his character may he have inherited from such a mother?

His success came early. There is no tale to be told of the struggles and heartburnings of unacknowledged genius. Before he was fiveand-twenty years of age he was celebrated, and to the very hour of his death his popularity steadily and constantly increased. His life was short when measured by years; but if we take the truer measure of sensation, it extended far beyond the ordinary limit of humanity. His brain was never idle, and his hand rarely at rest. The amount of intellectual labour he must have gone through is prodigious, and it is wonderful that an organ so finely constituted, an instrument so delicately tuned, as his brain must have been, did not give way

sooner.

This delicate power of perception, tremblingly alive to the finest and most evanescent characteristics of every object that presented itself to his notice, is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the genius of Leech. No truer record of the manners and habits of society in the middle of the nineteenth century can be conceived than that which is found in the productions of his pencil. His powers of satire were rather refined than deep. Had he worked with the pen instead of the pencil, he might have written the 'Precieuses Ridicules,' or the 'Rape

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of the Lock;' but could hardly have produced the 'Misanthrope' or the 'Moral Essays.' He preferred laughing at follies to lashing vices. The pretensions of a "snob," or the vulgarities of a gent," were the favourite objects of his satire ; like Touchstone, it was 66 meat and drink to him to see a fool." Yet the kindliness of his disposition shows itself in the mode in which he treats even his victim. One of the most popular and successful of his creations is "Old Briggs." How the character grows and develops under his hand from the fortunate day when "the cook says she thinks there's a loose slate on the roof, and Mr Briggs replies that the sooner it is set to rights the better, and he will see about it," through all the various phases of house-keeping and horse-keeping, of fox-hunting, fishing, pheasant-shooting, and deerstalking. And here we may observe the delicate gradations by which the artist has marked the progress of Mr Briggs in his sporting education. On his first introduction he is essentially a town man. He has probably spent his life, until past fifty years of age, in a warehouse, or behind a desk or a counter. But the strong sporting instinct has only lain dormant within him, till awakened by accident; and, when once aroused, breaks forth in full vigour. Briggs is a totally different character from the Cockney sportsman who was the butt of Gilray or of Seymour. It is impossible not to feel sympathy and respect for the perseverance and resolution with which he pursues his object, or affection for the goodhumour with which he meets repeated disappointment. Who can help rejoicing heartily with him when at last he catches that marvellous salmon ?

Little Tom Noddy is another admirable creation. How exquisitely ludicrous is the whole series of his sporting adventures! Yet the little man never loses his hold on our affections. Here, too, we find a re

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markable proof of the fertility of genius and acute observation of the artist. Briggs and Tom Noddy pass through the same scenes, but the ideas are always new, and each character is stamped with its own distinctive idiosyncrasies. They are as different from each other as Master Slender is from Froth, or Touchstone from the fool in Lear.

As a political caricaturist, Leech holds a position midway between Gilray and Cruikshank on the one hand, and H. B. on the other. His satire was not so keen nor was his pencil so vigorous as that of the two former artists; but it must be remembered that times have changed, and that the weapons with which Gilray assailed Pitt and Fox, and those which Cruikshank wielded against Castlereagh and Sidmouth, would not be equally fitted for the days of Peel and Lord John Russell, of Lord Palmerston and Mr Disraeli.

Leech possessed the finest eye for all objects of natural beauty. A keen sense of the beautiful distinguishes him from almost all other caricaturists. It is to be found occasionally, though rarely, in the earlier works of Gilray, and more frequently in those of Rowlandson, but disappears almost entirely from the later productions of both. In Cruikshank it finds its chief manifestation when he disports himself amongst the creations of fairyland; and it is well worthy of remark, that, unlike his predecessors, this sense of beauty seems to have strengthened instead of diminishing as time has mellowed the genius of that great master. Over Leech it has from the first exercised an abiding influence, and there is hardly a production of his pencil in which some touch does not appear to bear testimony to his devotion. His power of expressing beauty by a few lines strengthened with years, but with increasing facility of hand came in some degree the defect of mannerism. One type of beauty took possession of

his heart, and he too often contented himself with reproducing it. There are other artists of kindred genius to whose works we might refer as examples of a similar habit; and when it is remembered how rapid and unceasing the call upon his creative power was, that, week by week, for a period of twenty years, he produced designs which, for the amount of thought and invention they required, were equal to pictures, our surprise will be at the variety which he introduced in the character and expression of the actors in the scenes of his comedy. Leech's type of beauty is thoroughly English and domestic-the gay modest good-tempered girl who is the sunbeam on her father's hearth, the beloved of her brothers and sisters, the adored of her cousins, who passes by natural transition into the faithful wife and fond mother, who bears around her through life a halo of purity and innocence, is the muse that inspires his pencil. This purity is a constant characteristic of Leech's beauties. Constance, who drives her private hansomMiss Selina Hardman, who asks poor Robinson to "give her a lead" over a five-barred gate-Diana, who slips off at an ugly fence, leaving the skirt of her habit on the pommel of her saddle-have not the most remote affinity to the objectionable young ladies of the present day who ape the graces of Anonyma as she flaunts in the Park, are rather proud to be taken for "pretty horsebreakers," and expose themselves to the ridicule and contempt of their partners by talking. of persons and places of the mere knowledge of whose names they ought to be ashamed. It is difficult to say whether the hunting-field, the park, the croquet - lawn, the ball-room, or the seaside has furnished the richer field for the display of this phase of the genius of Leech; but we are disposed to think that all these must yield to his indoor scenes of domestic life. revels in the society of children.

He

Baby is a constant source of delight to him; the sports, the loves, the joys, and the sorrows of childhood awaken his warmest sympathy. We know of nothing more perfect than some of his representations of children's parties with what kindly satire he smiles at the affectation of the little premature men and women; and when he takes them out to dabble on the seashore, or mounts the boys on rough ponies and starts them for a ride over the downs, how the joyous shout and laugh ring in our ears.

There was in Leech all the material of a great landscape-painter. If we were to select one artist from whose works we should seek to give a foreigner a correct idea of English scenery, it is to his sketches we should have recourse. His backgrounds are marvels of truth and expression. The south coast of England, the peaceful valleys of the Thames, the brawling streams of Derbyshire, the broad undulating turf of our midland counties, the brown moors of Yorkshire, the Highlands of Scotland, and the strange, wild, weird scenes of Galway and Mayo, are all rendered with equal fidelity by his pencil, and each takes its appropriate place, as his drama shifts with the season from yachting and bathing to troutfishing, deer-stalking, shooting, and fox hunting. With Leech, nothing was conventional. Every accessory that he introduced showed his perfect knowledge of the scene he portrayed.

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The backgrounds alone of the Briggs" series will repay hours of study; and we have no hesitation in expressing our confident opinion that in future years these slight and apparently subordinate works will take a high place in the estimation of those who make landscape art their study. We know no better advice for a student than that he should look at nature with his own eyes, and then study carefully how she presented herself to those of Leech. His memory must

have been extraordinary, for, from the conditions under which he worked, most of these designs must have been produced in the studio; but the slight memoranda in his pocketbooks show that he never missed an opportunity of noting down even the most evanescent aspects of nature, the curl of a wave or the toss of the branches of a tree. All his designs are full of movement and action. His horses especially are alive, and almost as full of character as his men. Each is characteristic of his owner. Briggs's horse is as distinct from Tom Noddy's "playful mare," as their respective masters are from each other. His studies of horses began early, and in a school which was probably unique.

Leech was a boy at the Charterhouse in the palmy days of coachtravelling. In those days the north mails, after leaving the postoffice, passed along Goswell Street, close by the wall which bounds the playground of the Carthusians. It was a glorious procession, such as our sons will never see and can hardly fancy. How the light, compact, neatly appointed vehicles wound their rapid way along the crowded street behind their wellbred, high-conditioned teams-how gaily the evening sun glittered on the bright harness and glossy coats of the horses, and the royal uniform of the men! How cheerily the "yard of tin" rang out its shrill summons! Here and there a fast night-coach as well horsed and appointed mingled in the procession, and "All the blue bonnets," or "The Swiss boy "-forgotten melodies-were carolled forth by that obsolete instrument the key-bugle. Pleasant are the memories of "the road." In the days of our boyhood the box of a fast coach was a throne of delight. The young Carthusians were far too ingenious to permit the wall of their playground to shut them out from so glorious a sight. They cut notches and drove spikes in the trunks of a row of trees from