mond_," he
writes, "what would I not have given to possess sketches, however
slight, of Thackeray's own from which to inspire myself--since he was no
longer alive to consult. For although he does not, any more than
Dickens, very minutely describe the outer aspect of his people, he
visualised them very accurately, as these sketches prove."

"I doubt if Dickens did, especially his women--his pretty women--Mrs.
Dombey, Florence, Dora, Agnes, Ruth Pinch, Kate Nickleby, little
Emily--we know them all through Hablot Browne alone--and none of them
present any very marked physical characteristics. They are sweet and
graceful, neither tall nor short; they have a pretty droop in their
shoulders, and are very ladylike; sometimes they wear ringlets,
sometimes not, and each would do very easily for the other."

In 1868 Messrs. Harper published in book form under the title _Social
Pictorial Satire_ a series of articles which du Maurier had written in
_Harper's Magazine_, and which had originally formed the substance of
lectures which he had delivered in the prominent towns of England. He
speaks first of his great admiration of Leech in his youth. "To be an
apparently hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in some dreary, deserted,
dismal little Flemish town, and to receive _Punch's Almanac_ (for 1858,
let us say) from some good-natured friend in England--that is a thing
not to be forgotten! I little dreamed that I should come to London
again, and meet John Leech and become his friend; that I should be,
alas! the last man to shake hands with him before his death (as I
believe I was), and find myself among the officially invited mourners by
his grave; and, finally, that I should inherit, and fill for so many
years (however indifferently), that half-page in _Punch_ opposite the
political cartoon, and which I had loved so well when he was the
artist!" Du Maurier draws a pleasant portrait of his friend,
sympathetically, and very picturesquely analyses his art, which has, he
says, the quality of inevitableness. Of "Words set to Pictures" his long
description of Leech's pretty woman is as good as anything that can be
read of the kind. Then he sketches the characteristics of Charles
Keene's personality and passes on to his art:--"From the pencil of this
most lovable man, with his unrivalled power of expressing all he saw and
thought, I cannot recall many lovable characters of either sex or of any
age."

But the tribute to the craftsmanship, t