social problem. This
drawing was made some time before, but Mark Lemon, with less courage
than he showed in the publication of the "Song of the Shirt," hesitated
to insert it; and it is traditionally asserted that it was at the time
of the Editor's temporary absence through illness that Leech insisted
upon its publication. And who can forget the contemptuous drawing of the
brutalised dancers at Mabille (1847), or the other, made in full anger
and disgust at the sight of a Spanish bullfight "with the gilt off,"
after he had attended one, when towards his life's end he visited
Biarritz for a few days in fruitless search of health? It is a terrible
page, and probably touches the limit of what is permissible in art.
Shirley Brooks called it "a grim indictment of a nation pretending to be
civilised;" and in England, at least, it met with a throb of responsive
emotion and of cordial approval.

Passing from these things to a more pleasing one, we are struck with
Leech's exceptional love of beauty. Never did Nature seem more
delightful than in his cuts--in those dainty backgrounds in which the
loveliest scenery is so skilfully reproduced. "What plump young
beauties," cries Thackeray, "those are with which Mr. Punch's chief
contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem!" It is true,
they are nearly always the same girl, this ideal of _Punch's_--short in
stature, simple and pouting and laughing, with big eyes and rounded
chin, with bewitching dimples and pretty ringlets; but then this ideal,
this "little dumpling," was none other than Mrs. Leech! The artist had
seen her in the street in 1843, had fallen head over ears in love with
her upon the spot, followed her to her home, looked up the directory to
ascertain her name, obtained an introduction, and had straightway wooed
and won her. "Now I'll bet ten to one," he wrote to Percival Leigh, as
soon as he had been accepted, "that your reverence will think me the
oddest person in the world, at a moment like the present, to think of
writing to a friend; but I can't help sending you a line or two to say
that I have been made a 'happy man'.... Never laugh again at the union
of _2 soles_ (_i.e._, two flats); at any rate, don't expect me to join
in the guffaw." And so Miss Annie Eaton became Mrs. John Leech, the
object of her husband's devotion and of his inspired pencil. It is true
that his young ladies and his servants are all much of the same type;
but, in spite of Mr. Henr