unfortunate it may be for me, that I should be compared with my two
great predecessors, Leech and Keene, whom I have just been comparing
to each other.

When John Leech's mantle fell from his shoulders it was found that the
garment was ample to clothe the nakedness of more than one successor.

John Tenniel had already, it is true, replaced him for several years
as the political cartoonist of _Punch_. How admirably he has always
filled that post, then and ever since, and how great his fame is, I
need not speak of here. Linley Sambourne and Harry Furniss, so
different from each other and from Tenniel, have also, since then,
brought their great originality and their unrivalled skill to the
political illustrations of _Punch_--Sambourne to the illustration of
many other things in it besides, but which do not strictly belong to
the present subject.

I am here concerned with the social illustrators alone, and, besides,
only with those who have made the sketches of social subjects in
_Punch_ the principal business of their lives. For very many artists,
from Sir John Millais, Sir John Gilbert, Frederick Walker, and
Randolph Caldecott downward, have contributed to that fortunate
periodical at one time or another, and not a few distinguished
amateurs.

Miss Georgina Bowers, Mr. Corbould, and others have continued the
fox-hunting tradition, and provided those scenes which have become a
necessity to the sporting readers of _Punch_.

To Charles Keene was fairly left that part of the succession that was