tention of Ruskin.
"Is it not surely," he asks, "some overruling power in the nature of
things, quite other than the desire of his readers, which compels Mr.
Punch, when the squire, the colonel, and the admiral are to be at once
expressed, together with all that they legislate or fight for, in the
symbolic figure of the nation, to present the incarnate Mr. Bull always
as a farmer--never as a manufacturer or shopkeeper--and to conceive and
exhibit him rather as paymaster for the faults of his neighbours than as
watching for opportunity of gain out of their follies?" And again,
"... considering _Punch_ as the expression of the popular voice, which he
virtually is, and even somewhat obsequiously, is it not wonderful that
he has never a word to say for the British manufacturer, and that the
true citizen of his own city is represented by him only under the types
either of Sir Pompey Bedell or of the more tranquil magnate and
potentate, the bulwark of British constitutional principles and
initiator of British private enterprise, Mr. John Smith?"

[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE IN "PUNCH."

_(By J. Leech, J. Tenniel, L. Sambourne, and H. Furniss. Re-drawn by
Harry Furniss.)_]

It is true that _Punch_ has imposed upon a nation a character which, as
depicted, is unknown in the land, and placed him in a line of business
notoriously dissimilar from that in which he really engages; and the
sum-total of it all is greatly to the credit of Mr. Punch's influence.
He has, in fact, "educated" a nation. For to this day, no sooner does
each succeeding Wednesday spread the new issue over the country than a
mass of newspapers, both in England and in the colonies, immediately
describe and discuss "This week's cartoon" for the edification of their
readers. And so we have come to accept these types until they have
almost grown into concrete ideas--conventions which have been given to
us chiefly by Sir John Tenniel--Britannia and Father Time, the New Year
and the Old, Cousin Jonathan (or Uncle Sam) and Columbia, Death and
Crime, Starvation and Disease, Peace and War, Justice and Anarchy, the
British Lion (might not the symbol nowadays be more appropriately the
British Racehorse?), the Bengal Tiger, the Russian Bear, the Eagle, and
all the rest. And could they well be bettered?

FOOTNOTES:

[17] it was on Cardinal Wiseman's door, not upon a wall.

CHAPTER IX.

_PUNCH_ ON THE WAR-PATH: ATTACK.

_Punch_ lays about Him--Assaults t