otherwise--it is life itself. An optimistic life in which joyousness
prevails, and the very woes and discomfitures are broadly comical to
us who look on--like some one who has sea-sickness, or a headache
after a Greenwich banquet--which are about the most tragic things he
has dealt with.

(I am speaking of his purely social sketches. For in his admirable
large cuts, political and otherwise serious, his satire is often
bitter and biting indeed; and his tragedy almost Hogarthian.)

Like many true humorists, he was of a melancholy temperament, and no
doubt felt attracted by all that was mirthful and bright, and in happy
contrast to his habitual mood. Seldom if ever does a drop of his inner
sadness ooze out through his pencil-point--and never a drop of gall;
and I do not remember one cynical touch in his whole series.

In his tastes and habits he was by nature aristocratic; he liked the
society of those who were well dressed, well bred and refined like
himself, and perhaps a trifle conventional; he conformed quite
spontaneously and without effort to upper-class British ideal of his
time, and had its likes and dislikes. But his strongest predilections
of all are common to the British race: his love of home, his love of
sport, his love of the horse and the hound--especially his love of the
pretty woman--the pretty woman of the normal, wholesome English type.
This charming creature so dear to us all pervades his show from
beginning to end--she is a creation of his, and he thoroughly loves
her, and draws her again and again with a fondness that is half
lover-like and half paternal--her buxom figure, her merry bright eyes
and fresh complexion and flowing ringlets, and pursed-up lips like
Cupid's bow. Nor is he ever tired of displaying her feet and ankles