ower--_Punch's_
Downrightness offends France--Germany--And Russia--Lord Augustus
Loftus's Fix--Lord John Russell and "No Popery"--Mr. Gladstone and
Professor Ruskin on _Punch's_ Cartoons--Their Effect on Mr.
Disraeli--His Advances and Magnanimity--Rough Handling of Lord
Brougham--Sir Robert Peel--Lord Palmerston's Straw--Mr. Bright's
Eye-glass--Difficulties of Portraiture--John Bull _alias_ Mark
Lemon--Sir John Tenniel's Types.

Were you to ask the Editor, Staff, or Proprietors of _Punch_ whether
they regarded the political or the social section of the paper as the
more important, from the public point of view and their own, the answer
would probably be--that they could not tell you. Power and popularity,
even in a newspaper--_especially_ in a newspaper--are not synonymous
terms, and a great circulation does not necessarily carry influence
along with it. It may safely be taken that while the social section of
_Punch_, artistic and literary combined, earned for him his vast
popularity, his power, which at one time was great almost beyond present
belief, was obtained chiefly by his political satires with pen and
pencil. Nowadays, no doubt, their relative importance is more evenly
balanced, and what preponderating interest the cartoon may have for
"_Pater_" is equalled by the special fascination exercised by the social
picture over "_familias_."

It has been the mission of _Punch_, as of many another great and
original writer, to invent and import into the language words and
expressions which are surely destined to remain. It has already been
recorded how it was he who christened the great conservatory now at
Sydenham "The Crystal Palace"--though he was not so complimentary until
he had cultivated the personal friendship of Sir Joseph Paxton over the
"Daily News" affair. It is he who, in his most laconic manner, has
given his immortal counsel for all time to intending _maries_; it is he
who has crystallised the exaggerated idea of Scottish thrift and economy
in "bang went saxpence"--to the circumstances of all of which I have
already referred. Mr. Punch, in short, has left the English language
richer than he found it, not only in word, but in idea. So, again, the
present application of the word "cartoon" is in reality a creation of
_Punch's_.

At the birth of the modern satirical print--that is to say, in the reign
of Charles I.--we see it called "A Mad Designe;" eighty years later,