From the wonderful fidelity with which he rendered the cabmen and gamins of London, we might suppose he had them into his room to sit to him as studies. He never did this; he liked actions better than states. He was perpetually taking notes of all he saw; but this was the whole, and a great one. With this, and with his own vivid memory and bright informing spirit, he did it all. One thing we may be pardoned for alluding to as illustrative of his art. His wife, who was every way worthy of him, and without whom he was scarce ever seen at any place of public amusement, was very beautiful; and the appearance of those lovely English maidens we all so delight in, with their short foreheads, arch looks, and dark laughing eyes, their innocence and esprit, dates from about his marriage. They are all, as it were, after her, her sisters; and as she grew more matronly, she may still be traced in her mature comeliness and motherly charms. Much of his sketches and their dramatic point are personal experience, as in " Mr. Briggs has a Slate off his House, and the Consequences." He was not, as indeed might be expected, what is called a funny man. Such a man was Albert Smith, whose absolute levity and funniness became ponderous, serious, and dreary, the crackling of thorns under the pot. Leech had melancholy in his nature, especially in his latter years, when the strain of incessant production and work made his fine organization super-sensitive and apprehensive of coming evil. It was about a year before his death, when in the hunting field, that he first felt that terrible breast-pang, the last agony of which killed him, as he fell into his father's arms; while a child's party, such as he had often been inspired by, and given to us, was in the house. Probably he had by some strain, or sudden muscular exertion, injured the mechanism of his heart. We all remember the shock of his death: how every one felt bereaved, felt poorer,-felt something gone that nothing could replace, some one that no one else could follow.

What we owe to him of wholesome, hearty mirth and pleasure, and of something better, good as they are, than eitherpurity, affection, pluck, humour, kindliness, good humour, good feeling, good breeding, the love of nature, of one another, of truth-the joys of children, the loveliness of our homely English fields, with their sunsets and village spires, their glimpses into the pure infinite beyond--the sea and all its fulness, its waves "curling their monstrous heads and hanging them," their crisping smiles on the sunlit sands-all that variety of nature and of man which is only less infinite than its Maker; something of this, and of that mysterious quality called humour, that fragrance and flavour of the soul, which God has given us to cheer our lot, to help us to "take heart and hope, and steer right on

ward," to have our joke, that lets us laugh at and make game of ourselves when we have little else to laugh at or play with-of that which gives us when we will the silver lining of the cloud, and paints a rainbow on the darkened sky out of our own "troublous tears ;"-something of all these has this great and simple-hearted, hard-working artist given to us and to our children, as a joy and a possession for ever. Let us be grateful to him, let us give him our best honour, affection, and regard.

Mr. Leech was tall, strongly but delicately made, graceful, long-limbed, with a grave, handsome face, a sensitive, gentle mouth, but a mouth that could be "set," deep, penetrating eyes, an open, high, and broad forehead, exquisitely modelled. He looked like his works-nimble, vigorous, and gentle; open, and yet reserved; seeing everything, saying not much; capable of heartiest mirth, but generally quiet. Once at one of John Parry's wonderful performances, "Mrs. Roseleaf's Tea-party," when the whole house was in roars, Leech's rich laughter was heard topping them all. There are, as far as we know, only two photographs of him one-very beautiful, like a perfect English gentleman--by Silvy; the other more robust and homely, but very good, by Caldesi. We hope there is a portrait of him by his devoted friend Millais, whose experience and thoughts of his worth as a man and as an artist one would give a good deal to have.

When Thackeray wrote the notice of his sketches in The Times, Leech was hugely delighted-rejoiced in it like a child, and said, "That's like putting £1000 in my pocket." With all the temptations he had to Club life, he never went to the Garrick to spend the evenings, except on the Saturdays, which he never missed. On Sunday afternoons, in summer, Thackeray and he might often be seen regaling themselves with their fellow-creatures in the Zoological Gardens, and making their own queer observations, to which, doubtless, we are indebted for our baby hippopotamus and many another four-footed joke. He never would go to houses where he knew he was asked only to be seen and trotted out. He was not a frequenter of Mrs. Leo Hunter's at homes.

We now give a few typical woodcuts. It is impossible, from the size of our page, to give any of the larger, and often more complete and dramatic drawings. We hope ours will send everybody to the volumes themselves. There should immediately be made, so long as it is possible, a complete collection of his works, and a noble monument to industry and honest work, as well as genius and goodness, it would be. We begin with the British Lion:

THE STATE OF THE NATION.-DISRAELI MEASURING THE
BRITISH LION.

This is from a large Cartoon, but we have only space for the British Lion's head. He is dressed as a farm-labourer. He has his hat and a big stick in his hand, and his tail innocently draggling under his smock-frock, which has the usual elaborate needle-work displayed. Disraeli, who is taking his measure for rehabilitating the creature, is about a third shorter, and we would say six times lighter.

What a leonine simpleton! What a visage! How much is in it, and how much not! Look at his shirt collar and chubby cheek! What hair! copious and rank as the son of Manoah's, each particular hair growing straight out into space, and taking its own noway particular way; his honest, simple eyes, well apart; his snub, infantile nose; his long upper lip, unreclaimed as No-man's-land, or the Libyan desert, unstubbed as "Thornaby Waäste;" his mouth closed, and down at the corner, partly from stomach in discontent (Giles is always dyspeptic), partly from contempt of the same. He is submitting to be measured and taken advantage of behind his back by his Semitic brother. He will submit to this and much more, but not to more than that. He draws his line like other people, when it occurs to him; and he keeps his line, and breaks yours if you don't look to it.

He may be kicked over, and take it mildly, smiling, it may be, as if he ought somehow to take it well, though appearances are against it. You may even knock him down, and he gets up red and flustered, and with his hands among his hair, and his eyes rounder and brighter, and his mouth more linear, his one

leg a little behind the other; but if you hit him again, calling him a liar or a coward, or his old woman no better than she should be, then he means mischief, and is at it and you. For he is like Judah, a true lion's whelp. Let us be thankful he is so gentle, and can be so fierce and staunch.

Did you ever see such a wind? How it is making game of everything; how everything scuds! Look at his whiskers. Look at the tail of his descending friend's horse. Look at another's precursory "Lincoln and Bennett" bowling along! Look

at his horse's head-the jaded but game old mare; the drawing of her is exquisite; indeed, there is no end of praising his horses. They are all different, and a dealer could tell you their ages and price, possibly their pedigree.

There is a large woodcut in the Illustrated London News (any one who has it should frame it, and put the best plate-glass over it); it is called " Very Polite. The party on the grey, having invited some strangers to lunch, shows them the nearest way (by half a mile) to his house." The "party" is a big English squire sixteen stone at least-with the handsome, insolent face of many of his tribe, and the nose of William the Conqueror. He has put the grey suddenly and quite close to a hurdle-fence that nobody but such a man would face, and nothing but such blood and bone could take. He is returning from a "run," and is either ashamed of his guests, and wants to tail them off, or would like to get home and tell his wife that "some beggars" are coming to lunch; or it may be merely of the nature of a sudden lark, for the escape of his own and his grey's unsatisfied "go." The grey is over it like a bird. The drawing of this horse is marvellous; it is an action that could only last a fraction of a second, and yet the artist has taken it. Observe the group in the road of the astounded "strangers." There is the big hulking, sulky young cornet, "funking," as it is technically called; our friend Tom Noddy behind him, idiotic and ludicrous as usual, but going to go at it like a man such as he is, -the wintry elms, the big hedger at his work on his knees,-all done to the quick. But the finest bit of all is the eye of the mare. She knows well it is a short cut home; and her cheery, fearless, gentle eye is keenly fixed, not on where she is about to land that's all right-but on the distance, probably her own stable belfry. This woodcut is very valuable, and one of the largest he ever did.