d by
Nature. But the race changed, and _Punch_ changed with them. Venus was
Venus once more, and Mr. du Maurier was her Prophet.

"And the old ladies!" proceeds Mr. du Maurier; "it is such a pleasure to
draw them, and do one's best. To think of all the charming old ladies
one has known, and (according to one's letterpress) to select the chin
of one, the white curls of another, the mouth and nose of a third, and
then to make a subtle arrangement in sweet sympathetic wrinkles--too
often to be subtly disarranged by the engraver and the printer!

"Then we get to the male characters, and there it is comparatively plain
sailing; and would be pleasant sailing enough but for the hideousness of
certain portions of the modern male attire. However new, however good
the tailor, however comely the leg beneath, the TROUSER is the one
heart-breaking object to the conscientious but aesthetically-minded
draughtsman on wood! It ignores the knee, and falls on the boot in a
shape that has no reference to the ankle whatever--a shape of its
own--and yet the ankle is the foundation of everything!

"Next in order of demerit and impossibility comes the chimney-pot hat,
which is not lacking in character, but is ugly and ridiculous. Its one
redeeming feature is the difficulty it presents to the draughtsman. It
is mathematical, geometrical, with every curve known to science, as hard
to represent correctly as a boat or a fiddle--more so; and the delight
of successful achievement is proportionately great. Linley Sambourne
alone, who was originally trained as an engineer, has been able to
grapple with the chimney-pot hat; Walker all but succeeded by the sheer
force of his heaven-born genius."

But, in spite of all this beauty, surely his misrepresentation of
that divinity--the American Girl--is beyond all hope of pardon,
beyond contrition, beyond all penance. He does full justice to her
refined and splendid loveliness and her magnificent proportions;
but he seems to regard her, if one may say so, as a sort of
Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady, a little more
_outree_ and free and slangy and vulgar. She guesses in the ballroom
that English partners don't "bunch" (give bouquets); when invited to go
in to supper she avers, not without a sense of inward satisfaction, that
she is "pretty crowded already;" she has a deep though entirely a
tourist's interest in English institutions, ruins, and celebrities; she
has little reverence else f