. Evans,
one of the proprietors of _Punch_, and asked him how Leech was. "Very
ill," was the reply; "the sufferings he endures from noise are painful
to think of. I took him down into the country a little while ago to stay
a week, or as much longer as he pleased, promising him that he should
hear no organ-grinders there, nor railway whistles, nor firing of guns.
The next morning on getting up to breakfast, I found that he had packed
up his portmanteau and was ready to depart. 'I cannot stay any longer
here,' he said, 'the noise drives me frantic!' 'What noise?' 'The
gardener whetting his scythe. It goes through my ears like a corkscrew.'
And nothing that I could say could prevail upon him to prolong his
visit."

But there was no falling off in the quality of the work which Leech
executed for _Punch_ or other employers at this time; on the contrary,
his drawings seemed to me marked by more than their usual excellence.
Witness more especially the few etchings he lived to finish for "Mr.
Facey Romford's Hounds," and the coloured etching to "Punch's Pocket
Book" of the year. One of the illustrations which he designed for the
1864 edition of the "Ingoldsby Legends," and which shows us one of his
stalwart servant girls drawing up the trunkless head of "St. Genulphus"
from the bottom of the well, appears to me to call for special notice. I
would ask the reader to observe the details of that perfectly marvellous
drawing, executed with all the effect and at a fifth of the labour which
George Cruikshank in his best days would have bestowed upon it. I would
entreat him to mark that wicked, graceless, bald-pated old head, with
its port wine nose resting on the rim of the bucket, and its wicked old
eye suggestively winking unutterable things at the perplexed and
astounded maiden. I would ask him to look at that drawing; to take into
account the health of the genial, failing artist who designed it; and to
tell me, whether in all the range of English comic art he remembers to
have met with anything more intensely comical?

We find John Leech and his able coadjutor, Mr. John Tenniel, present at
the _Punch_ dinner of Wednesday, the 15th of June; but shortly
afterwards he started on the journey ordered by his medical advisers,
and set off for Homburg in the company of his friend, Mr. Alfred Elmore,
sojourning afterwards for a time at Schwalbach. He was absent altogether
about six weeks. A record in the diary to which I am indebted for s