00 in his pocket." The exhibition, indeed, was
so splendid a success that it is said to have brought in nearly L5,000.

Those who, like ourselves, have found it necessary to examine the
_Punch_ volumes from their commencement in 1841, down to the 31st of
December, 1864, cannot fail to be struck by the steady decrease in the
number of cartoons which the artist annually designed and executed for
the periodical. In 1857 the number contributed was 33; in 1858, 30; in
1859, 21; in 1860, 15, in 1861 the number had fallen as low as 10; while
in 1862 it did not exceed 4.[156] This decrease (which is confined, be
it observed, to the cartoons which he contributed to _Punch_) was due to
failing health consequent on the strain of incessant production. Of the
coming evil he himself was distinctly cognizant. It is said of him that
Lord Ossington, then Speaker, once met him on the rail, and expressed to
him his hope that he enjoyed in his work some of the gratification which
it afforded to others. His answer was a melancholy one:--"I seem to
myself to be a man who has undertaken to walk a thousand miles in a
thousand hours." It was certainly not such a reply as one would exactly
look for, looking only at the joyous character of the pictures he
executed for _Punch_. He complained in 1862--the year at which we have
arrived--of habitual weariness and sleeplessness, and was advised to try
rest and change of air. He acted upon the suggestion, and, accompanied
by his old friend Mark Lemon, proceeded in that year on a short tour to
Paris, and from thence to Biarritz. Leech's pencil was not idle on this
holiday, as two of his pictures will testify. The first, _A Day at
Biarritz_, appears in the Almanack of 1863, and among the figures he has
introduced into this delightful sketch is that of the grave and
saturnine Louis, snapping his fingers in the highest _abandon_ and
skipping off with his friend _Punch_ to enjoy his ocean bath. "The
other," says Mr. Shirley Brooks, "is a very remarkable drawing. It
represents a bull-fight as seen by a decent Christian gentleman, and for
the first time since the 'brutal fray' was invented the cold-blooded
barbarity and stupidity of the show is depicted without any of the flash
and flattery with which it has pleased artists to treat the atrocious
scene. That grim indictment of a nation professing to be civilized will
be a record for many a day after the offence shall have ceased."[157]

Leech returned from th