the cartoons were executed
by Doyle and Newman respectively, while Thackeray filled the space
usually occupied by Leech's smaller cuts.

His prejudices were to some extent the prejudices of Thackeray. That he
should have shared Gilbert a Beckett's dislike of Jews was perhaps to be
accounted for by his having in his youth been detained on two occasions
in "sponging-houses," though through no fault of his own; and visiting
the sins of the lowest upon the whole race, as is the orthodox practice,
he displayed towards them something of Alonzo Cano's ill-will and more
than his power of ill-doing. Similarly, towards Irishmen and Frenchmen
he showed the same hearty prejudice, not untinged, perhaps, with
patriotism; and of that Thackeray was led to write: "We trace in his
work a prejudice against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an
island much celebrated for its verdure and its wrongs. These are
lamentable prejudices, indeed; but what man is without his own?" Yet
they were honestly entertained, and acted upon according to the lights
of _Punch_ which at that time were full aflame.

[Illustration: JOHN LEECH'S HOUSE, KENSINGTON HIGH STREET (NOW
DEMOLISHED).

(_Drawn by John Fulleylove, R.I._)]

But these playful dislikes paled beside the hatred he bore to
organ-grinders--a hatred as unrelenting as the organ-grinders
themselves. For this he had only too sound a reason, for it was they
who, grinding his overworked nerves, were destined literally to play him
into his grave. As early as 1843 he began his campaign against them in
_Punch_, and he never relaxed it until his death. Morbidly timid of all
noise, he loved to stay at some quiet English seaside place, "where the
door-knockers were dieted to three raps a day;" but he writhed most
under the sound of the organ, and not Hogarth's Enraged Musician endured
half the torture that Leech suffered in physical and nervous agony. He
appealed with his pencil to the law; he ridiculed the barbarous persons,
such as Lord Wilton, who "rather liked it;" he portrayed the effect of
these tyrants of the street upon the sick and on the worker; and he
never spared the offenders themselves. Once, indeed, he was goaded into
showing one of these dirty persons leading a louse, like a monkey, by a
string; but after a few copies had been struck off (and included in the
parcel for Scotland), the printing-press was stopped, and the "realism"
was cut from the block. From the first contribution,