ready
mentioned, appears to have led to others, and among them one by "Phiz,"
a circumstance which is referred to in the following attack: "Phiz has
found a lower deep in the lowest depths of meanness. When Leech's
admirable caricature of Mulready's postage envelope was pirated by every
tenth-rate _sketcher_, Phiz steps in to complete the work of injustice,
and advertises his caricature of the same subject at _sixpence_, thus
both borrowing the design and underselling the artist upon whose brains
he is preying as the fly upon the elk's. Well might Leech exclaim, 'Et
tu, Brute!' (and you, you brute!) Leech is a genuine artist, while Phiz
is only a bad engraver." By way of answer to this vulgar abuse, Phiz
almost immediately afterwards produced his admirable illustration of
_Quilp and the Dog_, in No. 18 of "Master Humphrey's Clock."

In the pages of this defunct periodical we find a long and virulent
article on Benjamin D'Israeli, the late Lord Beaconsfield, from which we
have disinterred the following remarkable prophecy. After referring to
his celebrated parliamentary _fiasco_, and his own prophetic words on
that memorable occasion: "You won't hear me now; but the time will come
when you _shall_ hear me!" the writer goes on to say: "That time has
never since arrived. In vain did Benjamin parody Sheridan's celebrated
saying ('It's in me, and by G---- it shall be out of me!'). He renewed
his efforts repeatedly.... But though, in consequence of his (_sic_)
moderating his tone into a semblance of humility, he is sometimes just
listened to, he has never made the slightest impression in the house,
_and we may fairly predict he never will_." The article is illustrated
by a remarkable semi-caricature likeness of the late Lord Beaconsfield,
then in his thirty-second year, which, although unsigned and altogether
different from his well-known style, we can assign to no other hand than
that of John Leech. We found our opinion on the fact that the previous
portrait is by him; that none but his etchings appear in the latter
portion of the book; and because the bird represented following the
footsteps and mimicking the walk of the young statesman, is own brother
to the celebrated Jackdaw of Rheims immortalized by Thomas Ingoldsby. So
remarkable is the likeness, that the shadow of D'Israeli's follower and
that of Saint "Jem Crow" of the Legends are identical.

ARTISTIC POSITION SECURED.

In 1840 some of John Leech's sketches wer