en Mr. Pickwick himself, and I almost think a
greater creation! Besides, it took two to make Mr. Pickwick, the
author and the artist, whereas Mr. Briggs issued fully equipped from
the brain of Leech alone!

Not indeed that all unauthorised gallopers after the fox find
forgiveness in the eyes of Leech. Woe to the vulgar little cockney
snob who dares to obtrude his ugly mug and his big cigar and his
hired, broken-winded rip on these hallowed and thrice-happy
hunting-grounds!--an earthenware pot among vessels of brass; the
punishment shall be made to fit the crime; better if he fell off and
his horse rolled over him than that he should dress and ride and look
like that! For the pain of broken bones is easier to bear than the
scorn of a true British sportsman!

[Illustration: THANK GOODNESS! FLY-FISHING HAS BEGUN!

MILLER. "Don't they really, perhaps they'll bite better towards the
cool of the evening, they mostly do."--_Punch_, 1857.]
Then there are the fishermen who never catch any fish, but whom no
stress of weather can daunt or distress. There they sit or stand with
the wind blowing or the rain soaking, in dark landscapes with ruffled
streams and ominous clouds, and swaying trees that turn up the whites
of their leaves--one almost hears the wind rush through them. One
almost forgets the comical little forlorn figure who gives such point
to all the angry turbulence of nature in the impression produced by
the _mise en scene_ itself--an impression so happily, so vividly
suggested by a few rapid, instructive pencil strokes and thumb smudges
that it haunts the memory like a dream.

He loves such open-air scenes so sincerely, he knows so well how to
express and communicate the perennial charm they have for him, that
the veriest bookworm becomes a sportsman through sheer sympathy--by
the mere fact of looking at them.

And how many people and things he loves that most of us love!--it
would take all night to enumerate them--the good authoritative pater-
and materfamilias; the delightful little girls; the charming cheeky
school-boys; the jolly little street Arabs, who fill old gentlemen's
letter-boxes with oyster-shells and gooseberry-skins; the cabmen, the
busmen; the policemen with the old-fashioned chimney-pot hat; the old
bathing-women, and Jack-ashores, and jolly old tars--his British tar
is irresistible, whether he is hooking a sixty-four pounder out of the
Black Sea, or riding a Turk, or drinking tea instead of grog