nursechild, who is as big as herself--all these little ones, patrician
and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched
with curious nicety by this amiable observer.

We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, a print which
used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spectators, and in
which the Prince of Wales (his Royal Highness was a Foxite then) was
represented as sitting alone in a magnificent hall after a voluptuous
meal, and using a great steel fork in the guise of a toothpick. Fancy
the first young gentleman living employing such a weapon in such a
way! The most elegant Prince of Europe engaged with a two-pronged iron
fork--the heir of Britannia with a BIDENT! The man of genius who drew
that picture saw little of the society which he satirized and amused.
Gilray watched public characters as they walked by the shop in St.
James's Street, or passed through the lobby of the House of Commons.
His studio was a garret, or little better; his place of amusement a
tavern-parlor, where his club held its nightly sittings over their pipes
and sanded floor. You could not have society represented by men to whom
it was not familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few years since--one
of the wittiest of men, one of the most brilliant and dexterous of
draughtsmen--he published a book of "Les Anglais," and his Anglais
were all Frenchmen. The eye, so keen and so long practised to observe
Parisian life, could not perceive English character. A social painter
must be of the world which he depicts, and native to the manners which
he portrays.

Now, any one who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the
social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little
drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries we enter; what fine
young-gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies who wake