hat the Table had experienced
one of its earliest losses, that of GILBERT ABBOTT A BECKETT. And on
June 8th, in the following year, the boding black border appeared 'In
Memoriam' of DOUGLAS JERROLD. Ah, me, Mr. ANNO DOMINI, the jingling
of the cap-and-bells, howsoever merrily it may sound, is perforce
interrupted now and again by the chiming of a bell of deeper note and
sadder tone.

"Volume XXXIX. for 1860 saw the artistic advent of the Society
Satirist of the Victorian Era, GEORGE DU MAURIER; and in Volume XLIV.
for the year 1863, the presence of another 'New Boy' at my Table, was
evidenced by the appearance of the burlesque London-Journalish Novel,
'Mokeanna,' in which FRANCIS COWLEY BURNAND parodied the 'Penny
Dreadful.'

"The very first page of my Volume for 1864, Mr. ANNO DOMINI, recorded
a great, a grievous, an irreparable loss to me and to the world.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, the greatest of my contributors, had gone
for ever from my Table. And a little later--only a little later--in my
Number for November 12th, 1864, appeared an obituary notice--alas the
day!--of the great, the genial, the loved, the lamented JOHN LEECH.

"In the Volumes for this year, 1865, appear for the first time the
fanciful, ingenious, elaborately symbolical designs of CHARLES H.
BENNETT, who unhappily did not long enrich my pages with his facile
execution and singular subtlety of fancy. He died on the 2nd April.
His place at my Table was soon after taken by LINLEY SAMBOURNE.

"On the 23rd May, 1870, he who had sat at the head of my Table ever
since its first establishment, 'who wrote the first article in this
Journal, who from its establishment had been its conductor,' left
empty the chief seat at my board.

"'If this Journal has had the good fortune to be credited with
habitual advocacy of truth and justice, if it has been praised
for abstention from the less worthy kind of satire, if it
has been trusted by those who keep guard over the purity of
womanhood and of youth, we, the best witnesses, turn for
a moment from our sorrow to bear the fullest and the most
willing testimony that the high and noble spirit of MARK
LEMON ever prompted generous championship, ever made unworthy
onslaught or irreverent jest impossible to the pens of those
who were honoured in being coadjutors with him.'

"This, Mr. ANNO DOMINI, was the high and merited tribute which the
spokesman of his surviving colleague