ined employment upon the
very works to which the writer refers, and upon which (as he claims) his
reputation will rest.

Nor do we, nor can we, admit that, out of the circle of his
coreligionists, or the still narrower circle of educated unbiassed
minds, Doyle reaped much respect by the "noble sacrifice" of which the
writer speaks. English prejudice looks with special coldness on
conscientious motives it does not understand, and with which it can have
but little sympathy. Doyle was a man of purer motives and finer
sympathies than George Cruikshank; but the same insular prejudice which
conduced to the ruin of George Cruikshank, wrecked the future prospects
of an artist almost as original in some respects as the more brilliant
George. From the moment that Doyle retired from _Punch_, English
fanaticism and English prejudice persisted in regarding him as a
supporter of the "Papal aggression," and he permanently lost from that
moment the ground which his talent and his reputation had so honourably
won for him. From the moment he deemed it his duty to retire from the
circle of literary and artistic wits and humourists with whom he was
then associated, he took himself practically out of the range of comic
art, and the public ceased to trouble itself about him, although it had
lost (in the expressive language of Mr. Thackeray) "the graceful pencil,
the harmless wit, the charming fancy," of one of the most genial and
promising of English graphic satirists of the modern time. Before he
left _Punch_ he had executed for the periodical upwards of five hundred
illustrations, of which nearly eighty are cartoons.

But Richard Doyle manifested the honesty of purpose which was a part of
his noble nature by other sacrifices than his retirement from _Punch_.
From the friendly hand which has strewn flowers upon his grave, we learn
that at one time he was offered a handsome income to draw for a
periodical started some years ago, but declined the engagement because
he disapproved of the principles of those by whom it was conducted. "At
another he had a similar offer made him by a distinguished statesman on
behalf of a political journal, in which the work would have been light
and the remuneration excellent." He was offered his own terms to
illustrate an edition of Swift's humorous works; but here too he
refused, because he did not admire the morality of the witty Dean of St
Patrick's. "In these and other cases like them, religion, virtue, hi