rast to his habitual mood. Seldom if ever does a drop of his inner
sadness ooze out through his pencil-point--and never a drop of gall;
and I do not remember one cynical touch in his whole series.

In his tastes and habits he was by nature aristocratic; he liked the
society of those who were well dressed, well bred and refined like
himself, and perhaps a trifle conventional; he conformed quite
spontaneously and without effort to upper-class British ideal of his
time, and had its likes and dislikes. But his strongest predilections
of all are common to the British race: his love of home, his love of
sport, his love of the horse and the hound--especially his love of the
pretty woman--the pretty woman of the normal, wholesome English type.
This charming creature so dear to us all pervades his show from
beginning to end--she is a creation of his, and he thoroughly loves
her, and draws her again and again with a fondness that is half
lover-like and half paternal--her buxom figure, her merry bright eyes
and fresh complexion and flowing ringlets, and pursed-up lips like
Cupid's bow. Nor is he ever tired of displaying her feet and ankles
(and a little more) in gales of wind on cliff and pier and parade, or
climbing the Malvern Hills. When she puts on goloshes it nearly breaks
his heart, and he would fly to other climes! He revels in her
infantile pouts and jealousies and heart-burnings and butterfly
delights and lisping mischiefs; her mild, innocent flirtations with
beautiful young swells, whose cares are equally light.

She is a darling, and he constantly calls her so to her face. Her
favourite seaside nook becomes the mermaid's haunt; her back hair
flies and dries in the wind, and disturbs the peace of the too
susceptible Punch. She is a little amazon _pour rire_, and rides
across country, and drives (even a hansom sometimes, with a pair of
magnificent young whiskerandoes smoking their costly cigars inside);
she is a toxophilite, and her arrow sticks, for it is barbed with
innocent seduction, and her bull's-eye is the soft military heart. She
wears a cricket-cap and breaks Aunt Sally's nose seven times; she puts
her pretty little foot upon the croquet-ball--and croquet'd you are
completely! With what glee she would have rinked and tennised if he
had lived a little longer!

[Illustration: "IN THE BAY OF BISCANY O"

The Last Sweet Thing in Hats and Walking-Sticks.--_Punch_, September
27, 1862.]

She is light of heart, and