snug libraries we enter; what fine young-gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies who wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for an anchovy toast with the claret; who talk together in ball-room doors, where Fred whispers Charley — pointing to a dear little partner seven years old" My dear Charley, she has very much gone off; you should have seen that girl last season!" Look well at everything appertaining to the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs: how snug, quiet, appropriate all the appointments are! What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Briggs's is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery)! What a good stable he has, with a loose box for those celebrated hunters which he rides! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast-table looks! What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room: Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks; the children clustering round a great book of prints a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The inner life of all these people is represented: Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. It is your house and mine: we are looking at everybody's family circle. Our boys coming from school give themselves such airs, the young scapegraces! our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such, future students - lucky they to have a book so pleasant will regard these pages: even the mutations of fashion they may follow here if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye for tailory and millinery as for horse-flesh. How they change those cloaks and bonnets. ners' bills from year to year! Where are those prodigious chatelaines of 1850 which no lady could be without? Where those charming waistcoats, those "stunning" waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few brief seasons back, and which cause 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of "La Mode," to ask Ellen for her tailor's address. 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very likely facing the enemy at Inkermann; and How we have to pay milli pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one of those delightful nursery scenes which our artist depicts with such tender humor. Fortunate artist, indeed! You see he must have been bred at a good public school; that he has ridden many a good horse in his day; paid, no doubt, out of his own purse for the originals of some of those lovely caps and bonnets; and watched paternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favorite little people. As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them, private jokes, as it were, imparted to you by the author for your special delectation. How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. Leech observed the hair-dressers of the present age! Look at "Mr. Tongs," whom that hideous old bald woman, who ties on her bonnet at the glass, informs that "she has used the whole bottle of Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet." You can see the bear's-grease not only on Tongs's head but on his hands, which he is clapping clammily together. Remark him who is telling his client "there is cholera in the hair;" and that lucky rogue whom the young lady bids to cut off" a long thick piece" for somebody, doubtless. All these men are different, and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should hair-dressing be an absurd profession? The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr. Leech's pieces: his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness. Look at Betty, putting the urn down; at cook, laying her hands on the kitchen table, whilst her policeman grumbles at the cold meat. They are cook's and housemaid's hands without mistake, and not without a certain beauty too. The bald old lady, who is tying her bonnet at Tongs's, has hands which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans who are talking scandal: for what long years past they have pointed out holes in their neighbors' dresses and mud on their flounces. "Here's a go! I've lost my diamond ring." As the dustman utters this pathetic cry, and looks at his hand, you burst out laughing. These are among the little points of humor. One could indicate hundreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages. There is a little snob or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and pantaloons, smokes cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (Mrs. S. an immense woman, whom Snob nevertheless bullies), who is a favorite abomination of Leech, and pursued by that savage humorist into a thousand of his haunts. There he is, choosing waistcoats at the tailor's such waistcoats! Yonder he is giving a shilling to the sweeper who calls him "Capting;' now he is offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They don't know their own pictures, very likely; if they did, they would have a meeting, and thirty or forty of them would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One feels a pity for the poor little bucks. In a minute or two, when we close this discourse and walk the streets, we shall see a dozen such. Ere we shut the desk up, just one word to point out to the unwary specially to note the backgrounds of landscapes in Leech's drawings-homely drawings of moor and wood, and seashore and London street the scenes of his little dramas. They are as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves; our respect for the genius and humor which invented both increases as we look and look again at the designs. May we have more of them; more pleasant Christmas volumes, over which we and our children can laugh together. Can we have too much of truth, and fun, and beauty, and kindness? THE END. |