Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse. Mr. Punch parted with these
contributors: he filled their places with others as good. The boys at
the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheerily, and sold just as
many numbers, after these events as before.

* This was written in 1854.

There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is
the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures!
What would you give for it? The learned gentlemen who write the work
must feel that, without him, it were as well left alone. Look at the
rivals whom the popularity of Punch has brought into the field; the
direct imitators of Mr. Leech's manner--the artists with a manner of
their own--how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, in depicting
the public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. The truth, the
strength, the free vigor, the kind humor, the John Bull pluck and spirit
of that hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he
draws a horse, a woman, a child! He feels them all, so to speak, like
a man. What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief
contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem! What famous
thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs, on the back
of them, scampers across country! You see youth, strength, enjoyment,
manliness in those drawings, and in none more so, to our thinking, than
in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design.
Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and
tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads,
and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports, their
jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles come home from Eton; young
Miss practising her first flirtation; poor little ragged Polly making
dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of Jacky, her