h-faced to disguise themselves in
'mutton-chops' or 'Dundrearys'? Yet they _will_ do it. We may draw them
in their new guise, but the public won't have them at any price. They
want their old favourites, and if they miss a well-known 'Imperial,' a
moustache, a pair of dyed whiskers, or other such hall-mark in the
picture, or on the other hand find a set of familiar chins concealed
beneath an incipient Newgate fringe, a nose and chin which have been
accustomed to meet for many a long year suddenly divided by the
intrusion of a bristly moustache, or a delightfully asinine expression
lost under the influence of a pair of bushy side-whiskers, recognition
becomes impossible and the caricature falls flat. The fact is, my friend
Pen, it is not only their features, but their characteristic attitudes
which we make familiar, and their political differences cause the
artistic effect. To me it is marvellous to note how differently artists
draw the same head. Expression of course varies, but the construction of
the head must always remain the same. Yet I have seen no less a head
than that of Mr. Gladstone so altered in appearance in the work of
different artists that I have been forcibly reminded of the old story of
St. Peter's skull. A tourist travelling in Italy was shown a cranium at
Rome which he was assured was the veritable relic. In Florence he was
shown another, and somewhere else he was shown a third. Upon his
remonstrating the guide observed, 'It is quite right, sir: the skull you
saw at Rome was that of St. Peter when he was a boy; that at Florence
was his when he was a young man, and this was his skull when he died.'

"Then again, familiarity with the subject is only arrived at by
continually watching and sketching a Member. A few years ago I was lying
down in my berth in the sketch-book which was in H. F.'s pocket, when I
overheard a conversation between him and Mr. Labouchere upon
Parliamentary portraits."

"What did H. F. say about them?" asked the Pen. "He ought to know the
alphabet of Parliamentary portraiture at all events by this time."

"You're right," nodded the Pencil. "He's drawn a few thousand of them in
his time. What did H. F. say? Well, he told Labouchere that he always
created a type for each Member, and to that he adheres."

"'Yes,' said the Sage, late of Queen Anne's Gate, 'and when the original
turns up, those who derive their impression of a Member from your
sketches are disappointed if the two do n