ut no distortion. The most wildly funny people are low
comedians of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never
fails; they found themselves on fact, and only burlesque what they
have seen in actual life--they never evolve their fun from the depths
of their inner consciousness; and in this naturalness, for me, lies
the greatness of Leech. There is nearly always a tenderness in the
laughter he excites, born of the touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin!

[Illustration: A TOLERABLY BROAD HINT

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but you didn't say as we were to pull up
anywhere, did you, sir?"--_Punch_, 1859.]

Where most of all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness and
buoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside--the newly
discovered joys of which had then not become commonplace to people of
the middle class. The good old seaside has grown rather stale by this
time--the very children of to-day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctory
sort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, and are in strange contrast
to those highly elate and enchanting little romps that fill his
seaside pictures.

Indeed, nothing seems so jolly, nothing seems so funny, now, as when
Leech was drawing for _Punch_. The gaiety of one nation at least has
been eclipsed by his death. Is it merely that there is no such light
humorist to see and draw for us in a frolicsome spirit all the fun and
the jollity? Is it because some of us have grown old? Or is it that
the British people themselves have changed and gone back to their old
way of taking their pleasure sadly?

Everything is so different, somehow; the very girls themselves have
grown a head taller, and look serious, stately, and dignified, like
Olympian goddesses, even when they are dancing and playing
lawn-tennis.

I for one should no more dream of calling them the darlings than I
should dare to kiss them under the mistletoe, were I ever so splendid
a young captain. Indeed I am too prostrate in admiration--I can only
suck the top of my stick and gaze in jealous ecstasy, like one of
Leech's little snobs. They are no longer pretty as their grandmothers
were--whom Leech drew so well in the old days! They are _beautiful_!

And then they are so cultivated, and _know_ such a lot--of books, of
art, of science, of politics, and theology--of the world the flesh,
and the devil. They actually think for themselves; they have broken
loose and jumped over the ring-fence; they have t