respond. Mark, however, rose, and
in a brief and witty speech returned thanks for the honour that had been
done, as he neatly put it, to an absent friend.

"Disraeli's amiable advances availed him nothing. For a long time
afterwards _Punch_ gave no quarter to the 'Red Indian of debate' who, as
Sir James Graham pithily phrased it, 'cut his way to power with a
tomahawk.' The time came, however, when Disraeli could show his
magnanimity. Leech, who had satirised him weekly, and so familiarised
everyone with his face and figure that an aristocratic little damsel, on
being presented to him, exclaimed, 'I know you! I've seen you in
_Punch_!'--Leech had had a pension given to him by the Liberals, and
when he died the pension would have died with him, had not Disraeli, who
had at last risen to power, interposed and secured it to the family."
And so Leech, who apparently _could not_ make an enemy, was indebted to
the generosity of his victims for two of the greatest services that were
rendered to him and his.

Lord Beaconsfield himself acknowledged in his latest book, "Endymion,"
his respect for _Punch's_ influence at that time, as well as his desire
to temper the ardour of its attacks if not to secure its silence, for he
there explains how the hero, who to some degree at least is to be
considered an autobiographical study, "flattered himself that
'Scaramouche'" would regard him in a more friendly spirit. _Punch_, with
pardonable pride, devoted a cartoon to this pointed reference, but
merely remarking, "H'm--he _did_ flatter himself," abated not one jot of
his caustic criticism.

But for all the failure of his advances, and for all his
sensitiveness--so far as he could be said to be sensitive at
all--Beaconsfield kept a close eye on _Punch_, and kept many, if not
all, of the cartoons in which he figured. Similarly did Napoleon III.
love to collect all those of himself which he could obtain, and pore
over them at intervals, even in those sadly fallen times he spent at
Chislehurst. And he had material for reflection enough, for in no way, I
take it, can a public man learn what a world of savagery, hatred,
cruelty, and uncharitableness lies, not so much in man's mind, but in
that corner of it which we euphemistically term his "humour," as in
following the handiwork of the political caricaturist of France. Mr.
Spurgeon, too, used to keep all the cartoons and caricatures that sought
to turn him to ridicule; and Lord Beaconsfield, l