awings he ever made--he had just such a table duly laid for
dinner in the courtyard, with one person sitting at it in order to show
the proportion, and photographed it from a window of the house at the
necessary elevation.[65] But for his love of accuracy he would not have
done these things; nor, but for his love of naturalism, could he have
given us his numerous fine studies of Nature. And but for this, Mr.
Punch would never have printed one or two of his Norwegian sketches,
such as "The Church-going Bell," in which there was not the slightest
attempt at humour or fun--nothing but a calm and reposeful love of
Nature, the deep, sad impression on the mind and heart of the artist as
he watches the northern sun dip in sleepy majesty behind the panting
waves.

Like Rabelais, he can use the pencil to greater ends under cover of the
motley, and encase bitter truths with the gilt of a printed jest. Like
Giotto and his legendary feat, he can draw you a perfect circle with his
pen--and perhaps he is the only man in the country who can do it. His is
the rare gift that in him sense of fun, of dignity, and of art is equal.
He will brook nothing more serious in his sallies than chaff and banter;
and yet his kindly art, based upon Nature and observation of the work of
others, has, by its very truth, made him enemies even on foreign
thrones. Nevertheless, it is less as a politician and a satirist that he
claims recognition; it is primarily as an artist that he will assuredly
be remembered when his place among his countrymen has to be determined.

A Polish artist, with Mr. Sambourne's initials, L. Strasynski by name,
also began in 1867, and during that and the following year contributed
nine cuts, very foreign in feeling and firm in touch. Then, after an
anonymous draughtsman, "M.S.R.," had appeared with a single cut
("Candles"), Mr. F. Wilfrid Lawson, the elder brother and teacher of
Cecil Lawson, contributed a sheetful of initials and vignettes which
dribbled forth in the paper up to 1876; and Mr. T. Walters, a
half-a-dozen, up to 1875. Mr. E. J. Ellis, now better known in other
fields than comic draughtsmanship, began on December 12th, 1867. He had
received an introduction to Mark Lemon through Mr. (now Sir) Algernon
Borthwick, and found the Editor "good-natured enough," as he himself
says, "to allow me to do a dozen or so of initials, and a quarter-page
illustration. They were all more or less pinched and painful things, and
Mr. L