unmistakable fact that Leech's
popularity has been so much greater than Keene's, and I believe is
still. Leech's little melodies of the pencil (to continue the parallel
with the sister art) are like Volkslieder--national airs--and more
directly reach the national heart. Transplant them to other lands that
have pencil Volkslieder of their own (though none, I think, comparable
to his for fun and sweetness and simplicity) and they fail to please
as much, while their mere artistic qualities are not such as to find
favour among foreign experts, whereas Keene actually gains by such a
process. He is as much admired by the artists of France and Germany as
by our own--if not more. For some of his shortcomings--such as his
lack of feeling for English female beauty, his want of perception,
perhaps his disdain, of certain little eternal traits and conventions
and differences that stamp the various grades of our social
hierarchy--do not strike them, and nothing interferes with their
complete appreciation of his craftsmanship.

[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE LANDLORD!

RIBBONMAN (_getting impatient_). "Bedad, they ought to be here be this
toime! Sure, Tiriace, I hope the ould gintleman hasn't mit wid an
accidint!!!"--_Punch_, July 27, 1878.]

Perhaps, also, Leech's frequent verification of our manly British
pluck and honesty, and proficiency in sport, and wholesomeness and
cleanliness of body and mind, our general physical beauty and
distinction, and his patriotic tendency to contrast our exclusive
possession of these delightful gifts with the deplorable absence of
them in any country but our own, may fail to enlist the sympathies of
the benighted foreigner.

Whereas there is not much to humiliate the most touchy French or
German reader of _Punch_, or excite his envy, in Charles Keene's
portraiture of our race. He is impartial and detached, and the most
rabid Anglophobe may frankly admire him without losing his
self-esteem. The English lower middle class and people, that Keene has
depicted with such judicial freedom from either prejudice or
pre-possession, have many virtues; but they are not especially
conspicuous for much vivacity or charm of aspect or gainliness of
demeanour; and he has not gone out of his way to idealise them.

Also, he seldom if ever gibes at those who have not been able to
resist the temptations (as Mr. Gilbert would say) of belonging to
other nations.

Thus in absolute craftsmanship and technical skill