natural at such a moment, the face of Mr. O'Brien seems to limn itself
out, implacable and contemptuous; and there is a fearsome shadow on the
blind--the massive head of Lord Salisbury. The candle, marked '40,' is
the majority, which dwindles while the Ministers are sadly musing; and
over the mantelpiece, behind the Premier's chair, mutely reproachful,
hangs a picture of the great Cabinet of 1880. It is distinctly the best
thing Mr. Furniss has done."

That impression was shared by my private friends as well, even those on
_Punch_. My dear friend Mr. E. J. Milliken, a strong Radical, and a most
active member of the staff, in a reply to a letter of mine, in which I
intimated that I was afraid my cartoon would give offence, replied in a
most flattering spirit.

I had to play the "villain" in another scene in the same political
drama, "Mr. Punch's Historical Cartoons" (1893), in which the same
Cabinet is shown in Mr. Gladstone's room in the "Bauble Shop"--the House
of Commons. Those Radicals who had not joined the Unionists again took
offence. Those Radicals who had become Unionist wrote to congratulate
me. From one well-known and powerful personality, a historical name in
the publishing world, I received the following:

"February 23rd, 1893.

"Your cartoon p. 95 delights us all. I have looked at it twenty times
and seen fresh points in it. Nothing for years, I should say, has so
entirely caught the very spirit of a great crisis.

"We shall owe something to you for this felicitous exposure of
Gladstone's insane Bill. Alas! the miners and the brickies, the
costermongers and the dust-cart drivers, have now the power. The middle
class has been out-numbered, and if it were not that some labouring men
and artisans have hard heads enough to comprehend the position we should
be landed in a pretty pickle next September.

"It is a pity traitors' heads are nowadays their own copyright."

A "copyright" in heads is a good suggestion, and coming from a publisher
too! But apart from "traitors," there are others known to a
caricaturist. The House of Commons at one time was rich in them. Some
such works of art suffer in being translated. Indeed, what the poet
"Ballyhooley" wrote of one might apply to others:

"DARWIN MacNEILL.

"Darwin MacNeill, all the papers are hot on you,
Darwin MacNeill, they are writing a lot