r the mortal illness which soon had him in
its grip. The "Paris Sketches" in the number that bear his signature
were--like the "war correspondence from the front" concocted in Fleet
Street--quietly drawn at home down at Chelsea. One thing primarily the
number showed: that _Punch's_ national prejudices have mellowed with
time, and that a Frenchman may be accepted as a cultivated gentleman and
a genial companion--a very different being to him whom Leech habitually
drew as a flabby-faced refugee in Leicester Square, "with _estaminet_
clearly written across his features," while Thackeray applauded the
conception in his most righteous hatred and contempt for all things
vile.

Two other special means has _Punch_ adopted with the view of pleasing
his constituents and confounding his enemies, exclusive of the mock
Mulready envelope known as the "Anti-Graham Envelope" and the "Wafers,"
which are elsewhere referred to. The first of these was the music
occasionally printed in his pages from the hand of his own particular
maestro, Tully, the well-known member of the _Punch_ Club, whose musical
setting of "The Queen's Speech, as it is to be sung by the Lord
Chancellor," appeared in 1843; the polka, at the time when that dance
was a novel and a national craze, dedicated to the well-known
dancing-master, Baron Nathan; "_Punch's_ Mazurka," in Vol. VIII. (1845);
and one or two other pieces besides. The other was a coloured picture
representing a "plate"--a satire on the poor and inartistic "coloured
plates" then being issued by S. C. Hall's "Art Union." It was a clever
lithographic copy of an ordinary "willow pattern" plate; a homely piece
of crockery, broken and riveted, beneath which is inscribed: "To the
Subscribers to the Art Union this beautiful plate (from the original in
the possession of the Artist) is presented, as the finest specimen of
British Art, by _Punch_." It was designed by Horace Mayhew; but the
edition was extremely limited--not a hundred copies, it is
understood--on account of the expense, which it was thought was not
justified by the excellence or the likely popularity of the joke.

Such have been some of _Punch's_ efforts outside the usual routine, and
the result has been the continual popularisation of the paper. Volume
after volume, too, in various forms, has been republished, culminating
in the "Victorian Era," "Pictures from _Punch_," and "Sir John Tenniel's
Cartoons;" and each one has but served to attract th