patronage had been taken away.
I thought this pretty good for Whig doctrine. 'No,' he went on, 'I never
abused my patronage. Do you remember a cartoon in _Punch_ where I was
represented as a little boy writing 'No Popery' on a wall and running
away?' I said that I did. 'Well,' he continued, 'that was very severe,
and did my Government a great deal of harm; but I was so convinced that
it was not maliciously meant that I sent for John Leech, and asked him
what I could do for him. He said he should like a nomination for his son
to Charterhouse, and I gave it him." This, surely, if it be true--for
Mr. Silver has a very different story--was a "retort courteous" that
would prove how deeply the cartoon went home. Were it true, it would
show how the independence of Leech could be in no wise affected--though,
going to the House one day, he was greatly struck with the extraordinary
dignity of the Minister during his speech in the great debate on foreign
policy (February 17th, 1854), when the Crimean War with Russia
threatened.

In Mr. Gladstone's "great Edinburgh speech" of the autumn of 1893 the
veteran Premier said that _Punch_, "whenever it can, manifests the
Liberal sentiments by which it was governed from the first." And
naturally, as a consistent Liberal supporter, it as consistently
attacked the Tory party. Says Mr. Ruskin in one of his lectures on "The
Art of England:" "You must be clear about _Punch's_ politics. He is a
polite Whig, with a sentimental respect for the Crown, and a practical
respect for property. He steadily flatters Lord Palmerston, from his
heart adores Mr. Gladstone. Steadily, but not virulently, caricatures
Mr. D'Israeli; violently and virulently castigates assault upon property
in any kind, and holds up for the general idea of perfection, to be
aimed at by all the children of heaven and earth, the British Hunting
Squire, the British Colonel, and the British sailor."

This persistent opposition to Disraeli throughout his whole career--an
hostility more bitter than perhaps might have been expected from
Ruskin's "polite Whig"--was esteemed at its full importance by the
object of it, though it was accepted by him, as similar attacks are
accepted by all great minds, in excellent part. Nevertheless, after only
three or four years of attack, he made a determined though unsuccessful
attempt to conciliate his pungent critic. Vizetelly, in his "Glances
Back through Seventy Years," tells the story with all the