or what is in the heavens above or the earth
beneath; and she dearly loves a lord--or she would, if by any
honourable means she can obtain the chance. His American girls, too,
all come from one and the same place; they are all born from one and the
same mother; their natural cleverness and unnatural ignorance are
compounded in the same proportions, and, altogether, they are the most
charming and delightful libels on American young-womanhood that well
could be. But is his representation of the American girl any less
pleasant than the common, home-made American view of an English
gentleman--at least, of an English "swell"? Not at all. On the contrary,
she is, as I said before, a divinity.

More than once Mr. du Maurier has broken away from his light comedy
_role_ and, besides giving vent to his fantastic power in his wonderful
"Night-mares," has given us something with serious thought, and, now and
again, with tragedy in it--has offered us, indeed, a taste of the
deepest poetic quality that he has shown in his novels of "Peter
Ibbetson" and "Trilby." You may see a touch of it in Tenniel's great
cartoon at the outbreak of hostilities between France and Germany, in
which the great Napoleon stands warningly in the path of the infatuated
Emperor; that was du Maurier's suggestion. You may see a touch of it in
the page drawing of "Old Nickotin Stealing Away the Brains of His
Devotees" (1868), in which a circle of strange men, whose own heads are
their pipe-bowls, smoke away their brains through long tubes that work
well into the composition, while, in the foreground, one of the poor
foolish wretches drops, just as a last little curling puff rises from
his smoked-out skull. There were more of such compositions before 1880,
at the time when Mr. du Maurier was still making full-page drawings in
_Punch_. But, after all, it is not in _Punch_, but rather in the
"Cornhill Magazine" and "Once a Week," in "Esmond," and other
works--particularly in the "Illustrated Magazine"--that his full power
in serious work must be sought.

Professor Ruskin, after declaring that the "terrific force" of Mr. du
Maurier's satire of character in face and figure consists in the
_absence_ of caricature, describes as "cruelly true" the design
"representing the London mechanic with his family when Mr. Todeson is
asked to amuse 'the dear creatures' at Lady Clara's garden tea;" and
proclaims the artist more exemplary than either John Leech or John
Tenniel ("