is not only just, but remarkably fair. With reference to the illustrations to the "Newcomes," he acknowledges "their all but inestimable dramatic value." "Illustrations to imaginative literature," he continues, "are too frequently an intrusion and an impertinence, but these really added to our enjoyment of a great literary masterpiece, and Doyle's conception of the Colonel, of Honeyman, of Lady Kew, is accepted at once as authentic portraiture. In Ethel he was less happy, which was a misfortune, as she was the heroine of the book; but many of the minor characters were successes of the most striking and indisputable kind." Further on, he says of Doyle's etching, A Student of the Old Masters,-"Colonel Newcome is sitting in the National Gallery, trying to see the merits of the old masters. Observe the enormous exaggeration of aërial perspective resorted to in order to detach the figure of the Colonel. The people behind him must be several miles away; the floor of the room, if judged by aërial perspective only, is as broad as the Lake of Lucerne." The criticism, though exaggerated, is not unfair or unjust; but the people are certainly not miles away. Doyle has perpetuated a mistake common with many English artists, who seem to think, as Hazlitt expresses it, that, "if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of the general result." Doyle's intention to give us a portrait of Colonel Newcome only has prompted him to treat the subordinates as almost non-existent. His work, however, was never intended to be faultless; it carries out his own intention most thoroughly and admirably, and in a manner very far superior to anything which Thackeray himself could have done.

The closing scenes in the life of this most amiable and unselfish of artists we give in the singularly graceful words of his Catholic biographer: "In the autumn of last year (1883), Mr. Doyle spent some time in North Devon, and while there painted a picture of Lynton churchyard. The view is taken at a distance of some ten or fifteen yards to the south-west of the church, and is looking in

William Hazlitt on The Fine Arts," p. 51.

an easterly direction. In front of the picture one sees far down below the blue waters of the Bristol Channel, while behind the picturesque little church nestles among the trees. In the churchyard an old man is mowing down the long grass amid the graves, while two or three little children scatter flowers on one of them. This picture was unfinished at the time of his death. A strange coincidence that he should have chosen such a scene for his last picture, when, as far as man can judge, he had no sort of reason for thinking that death was so near; stranger still, that on his return home he chose for the sketch a black frame, as if to clothe it in the garb of mourning for its maker. There it remains on his easel, unfinished still, as if to tell of one cut off so suddenly, not indeed in the summer of life, but in a mellow autumn, which seemed to give promise of many years of good work still to be done. But the time had come when the little sprites who peopled his dreams of earth, were to be exchanged for the angel forms who were to welcome the faithful servant to his reward in heaven. On the 10th of December, as he was preparing to return from the Athenæum club, Mr. Doyle was struck down by apoplexy. An ambulance was procured, and he was carried home. He never regained the power of speech, and it is doubtful whether he was ever again conscious, though the priest who anointed him for his journey from thence to heaven thought that he detected some traces of a joyful acquiescence in the rite. The next morning, in the home where the last years had been spent in quiet peaceful pursuit of the art he passionately loved, his simple, innocent, loyal soul passed away from earth to heaven."

It will be admitted that Mr. Tenniel joined the ranks of the graphic satirists at the commencement of troublous times. The nations of Europe, with the exception of England, whose slumbers still remained unbroken, were all more or less awake. Prussia, insufficiently avenged (as she herself considered) at Waterloo for the unendurable humiliations which Napoleon had heaped upon her

after Jena, had been unostentatiously preparing for another deadly struggle with France, and perfecting the most admirable military machinery of modern times. Russia, under Nicholas, a thorough soldier in theory, had an army so elaborately over-drilled that when the time came it was found practically useless for the purposes of actual warfare. The sleep of England was suddenly awakened by the war with Russia, and afterwards by the revolt of her Indian mercenaries. The Russian was to be followed by a war between France and Austria; the enfranchisement of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic; the fratricidal struggle between Prussia and Austria, and the rending asunder within six weeks of the famous Germanic Confederation of the Rhine. It is a somewhat singular coincidence that immediately before the commencement of these troubles the great Duke of Wellington died, an event commemorated by two remarkable cartoons of Tenniel, the first of which is entitled September xiv. MDCCCLII. (the day of the great soldier's death), and the other, The Duke's Bequest for the most Worthy.

The year 1853 opened the eyes of those of us who fancied that war was a thing of the past, and that the reign of Universal Peace had begun. Not only was Turkey at war with Russia, but had given her a tremendous thrashing at Oltenitza, an event alluded to in the artist's cartoon of A Bear with a Sore Head. One of the best of his satires of the same year depicts Aberdeen as he appeared in The Unpopular Act of the Courier of St. Petersburg, wherein the premier attempts the risky feat of driving a team of unmanageable horses. The features of the nervous athlete betray much anxiety; the two fiery leaders, Russia and Turkey, prove wholly beyond his control; while Austria, unsettled by their bad example, is much disposed to be troublesome.

England was not only

Matters went from bad to worse in 1854. thoroughly aroused but angry, not only with her enemies, but with the foolish people who had preached peace to her when there was no peace; and, in What it has Come to, we find my Lord Aberdeen vainly trying to hold in the British lion, whose ire has been roused by the Russian bear, who is seen scampering off in the distance.