Then we have Disraeli, also as a boy, in whose figure that statesman's curious foppery in dress is felicitously noted, confronted with a majestic figure of Sir Robert Peel, who says:
"Well, my little man, what are you going to do this Session, eh?"
"Why--aw--aw--I've made arrangements--aw--to smash everything."
Events of the past, looked at by the light of the present, assume sometimes very strange, almost incredible aspects. Can there have been a time, one is inclined to ask, when a man's religion could prove a bar to college, Bench, and Parliament? Assuredly there was such a time, and not long ago--say forty years or so--when no Jew could be a judge or a member of Parliament; and it was only after severe battles and many defeats that victory at last attended the Jewish banner. One of the most violent opponents of the Jews was Sir Robert Harry Inglis, a very conscientious and worthy gentleman. By a happy thought of Leech's, Sir Robert is made to figure in one of the most humorous of the political cartoons.
About this time my old friend Frank Stone had painted two pictures in illustration of his favourite theme--love. They were called "The First Appeal" and "The Last Appeal." In the first a kind of peasant lover is beseeching his "flame" to listen to his vows. She listens, but without encouraging a hope in the swain that he will prevail. Time is supposed to pass, leaving terrible traces of suffering--apparently to the verge of consumption--in the young man, who, on finding the girl at a well, makes his last, almost dying, appeal. He seizes her hand; but she turns away, deaf to his passionate beseeching.
In the Leech drawing the composition of Stone's picture is exactly preserved; but in place of the lady we have Sir Robert Inglis, who turns away in horror from a young gentleman of a very marked Jewish type indeed.
The present _Punch_ artists have greatly the advantage of Leech, in respect of the aid derivable from photography. In these days, there is scarcely a statesman whose photograph cannot be seen in the London shop-windows, to the great advantage of the political caricaturists of to-day. It was only at the latter part of Leech's time that photography became so generally used to familiarize us with the features of our legislators, and even then I doubt if Leech took much advantage of it. He had seen all these men, and a rough sketch in his note-book, aided by his marvellous memory, was sufficient to enable him to produce unmistakable likenesses.