morous pictures, the originals of which are in the
possession of Colonel Stuart Sandeman, the proprietor. The Stanley Water
begins below Burnmouth." Many of his fishing-sketches were made at
Whitchurch in Hampshire, when staying with Mr. Haydon aforesaid.

Half Leech's popularity came, probably, from his sketches in the Row and
in the hunting-field. Even so hearty a hater of horse-flesh as
Ruskin--so far as he could hate animals at all--has declared that the
most beautiful drawing in all _Punch_ is Miss Alice on her father's
horse--"her, with three or four young Dians." Leech's sympathy for
horses was natural to the man, and had no little influence in toning
down those rampant ideas of Democracy and Socialism to which Thackeray
referred. In the opinion of many, not all the Conservative party,
landlords and House of Peers together, will, in the great coming
struggle with "King Demos," exert against him and his Socialism a
fraction of the power of resistance that will ultimately be found in the
national love of horses and of sport, whether in the hunting-field, on
the racecourse, or in the sporting column of the daily paper; and this
belief John Leech himself entertained.

Leech, whose pecuniary resources were always being drained by relations
other than those of his own immediate household, and on behalf of whom
it is generally admitted that he worked himself to death, rode and
hunted, as he said, not from extravagance, but in order that he might be
fit and able to do his work. And his riding, which was a necessity to
himself, was not less indispensable to _Punch_, for a very considerable
amount of the Paper's support in the Country depends upon his "horsey
sketches." Without them English life would not be properly represented,
particularly in its most delightful and engaging of pastimes, and
without them English support--from that prosperous class to which
_Punch_ specially appeals--would hardly be forthcoming.

But, for all his love of horses and the hunting-field, Leech was not a
particularly good rider, and a friend of his tells how he laughingly
insisted on buying from him a horse that was not sound in his wind, as
he could not run away. Yet he poked good-natured fun at the riding of
his friend Sir John Millais, and once told him that as he followed him
in the field he had conceived the original idea of drawing some
"triangular landscapes" as seen through Millais' legs. He satirised
himself with equal good-temper