pluck and honesty, and proficiency in sport, and wholesomeness and
cleanliness of body and mind, our general physical beauty and
distinction, and his patriotic tendency to contrast our exclusive
possession of these delightful gifts with the deplorable absence of
them in any country but our own, may fail to enlist the sympathies of
the benighted foreigner.

Whereas there is not much to humiliate the most touchy French or
German reader of _Punch_, or excite his envy, in Charles Keene's
portraiture of our race. He is impartial and detached, and the most
rabid Anglophobe may frankly admire him without losing his
self-esteem. The English lower middle class and people, that Keene has
depicted with such judicial freedom from either prejudice or
pre-possession, have many virtues; but they are not especially
conspicuous for much vivacity or charm of aspect or gainliness of
demeanour; and he has not gone out of his way to idealise them.

Also, he seldom if ever gibes at those who have not been able to
resist the temptations (as Mr. Gilbert would say) of belonging to
other nations.

Thus in absolute craftsmanship and technical skill, in the ease and
beauty of his line, his knowledge of effect, his complete mastery over
the material means at his disposal, Charles Keene seems to me as
superior to Leech as Leech is to him in grace, in human naturalness
and geniality of humour, in accurate observation of life, in keenness
of social perception, and especially in width of range.

[Illustration: A STROKE OF BUSINESS