The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 31, 1864.

VURNI FURE, CARPETS, BEDDING, and
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Every article warranted.
CLERGYMEN and GENTLEMEN ABOUT TO FUR-
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A Six-roomed Parsonngc
An Eight-roomed ditto
A Ten-ro 'reed ditto
A Twelve-roomed ditto 391 11 0

together with a ?rice List of purified Bedding, and a mass
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GREY HAIR-248, High Holborn, London.—
ALEX. ROSS'S charges for Dyeing the hair perma-
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G eorge-street.

DEATH OF MR. JOHN LEECH.

Suddenly there ig a great blank among us, and
the shadow of a great darkness► One of our dearest
and most delightful companions, one whom not only
we, but also all whose eyes will rest upon these
columns, must think of as in some sort a cherished
companion, is taken from us, John Leech, known
to the public as one of the Most kindly and the
most graceful humourists that ever lived, known to
his friends for a peculiar gentleness and refinement
of character that at first sight seemed as it were in
opposition to the robustness of his judgmen►, and
therefore took many people by surprise, died on
Saturday evening at 7 o'clock. The death of Garrick
was said to have eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
the death of Mr Leech will touch many more hearts
both of this and other nations, than Garrick ever
reached. Although he looked strong, he had been
long a suffererer, and complained of sleeplessness;
his incessant brainwork induced a peculiar irrita-
bility with which meat persons have a tendency to
jest rather than to sympathise. He was much
affected by noise,- and was literally driven from his
house in Brunswick-square by street music. He
hoped to get peacoat Kensington, especially as he
shut them out by the device of double windows;
but he had no peace, and in addition to the torment
of the organs he caste to be tifilictea at early dawn
bytttelmainekof so:tie anWil mechanic. Hie friends
made light of it, and tried to jest wall him. ,6 You
may laugh,", he would say, "but I aesure you it
will kill me." He was so unwell that during this

last summer he was obliged to go abroad, and he
was forbidden to indulge in his favourite exer-
cise of riding on horseback. He came back
better in the autumn, but still be was strangely
susceptible to noise, and only than a fortnight ago
he spoke with more than his usual earnestness,
with something even of passionate entreaty
in his tones about the suffering which
the street organs gave him, and about the
smallness of the sympathy wnich he received frt m
people who have to work their brains in a mere
routine. At last his sufferings have come to an end,

and if any of his friends were inclined to treat them
as imaginary they will now be convinced. It is
not a year since he stood in tears by the grave of
his schoolfellow, Thackeray, and now his friends
will follow him, too, to his long home. They were
schoolfellows together, they were fellow-workers
ttideltreilkfFunch ; both had something even of
womanly gentleness intermingled with the strength
of their characters; and both were' in their styles
of working classical.
Although Mr Leech lived to be 47 years of age,

the record of his life is short and simple. He was
born in London in 1817, and was educated at the
Charterhouse. He left school to atudy medicine,
and had made-considerable progress in that direc-
tion before he discovered what wAs_lto be his true
path in life. His first sketch in Punch, entitled

"Foreign Affairs," appeared in the fitst Week! of
August, 1841, and thenceforward the:history of his
• lite is to be seen week by week in .the pages of that
popular periodical. No doubt, he- was otherwise
engaged also. He illustrated almanacs and novels,
books of travel and poems. A Christmas tide with-
out two dozen sketches by Leech, Julia the most
graaefal and delicate humour, would iv a strange
Christmas indeed, a Christmas which might as ell
be without holly and mistletoe, dancing•and god
cheer. He always took great pains as Christmas
drew nigh, and year by year seemed to surpiiss
himself in delicacies of touch, and in the charm; of
his humour. But it was through the weekly pages
of Punch, far more than through the yearly almanac,
that Mr Leech was bestiiknown to the public; and
his life is there tefiqkcit He
_goes to grance and.
drawsa French scene, to Scotland anddraws a Scotch
one. Then his experiences of our social life—his
pictures of balls, dinner parties, mess-rooms, bache-
lors' chambers, Rotten-row, gardens, parks, streets,
watering places, shooting parties, hunting fields.
boating, fishing, and we know net what else,
make up such a history of his limo as to the future
historian will be invaluable. The fashion of the
day, the passion of the hour is rifLeted on his page
as in a photograph. And while we have thus in his
sketches a curiously complete history of certain
phases of this Victorian era, we have also in them a
picture and a chronicle of the artist's own life,
Anyone, without knowing Mr Leech personally,
can detect in these sketches the work of a keen-
sighted, hearty sort of man, healthy and broad in
his sympathies, full of fun, but still more charmed
with grace, and sensitive to beauty, fond of chil-
dren, fond of dwelling on all youthful beauty, fond
of beautiful dogs and horses, but above all filings
of truth and nature.

We have said that he was classical in his style of
working. One cannot well speak of the ridiculous
in itself as classical; and much of Mr Leech's work
concerned the ridiculous. But in him the sense of
the grotesque and the love of satire was never
allowed to interfere with, much less to over-ride, his
attraction to whatever was beautiful and true. There
never was a caricaturist who was so little of a ca•
ricaturist ; who would gi the truth of nature on
so many different sides, and seemed at the same
time to have so quick an eye for whatever is lovely
in nature. He drew with equal ease a fine lady and
a crossing-sweeper—and on the same page he would
bewitch the reader of Punch with the loveliest of

little maidens, and provoke him with the vulgarest
of upstarts. And ha was always seeing and drawing
something new. Suddenly we should be astonished
with some sea-piece in which the billows were ren-
dered with wonderful skill. Or we had some moun-
tain scenery, or a glade in a wood, or ploughed
fields, or standing corn. He never stood still.
When we wondered what should come next, we
had some rare sky, some curious effect of light. And
all this display of scenery was the mere background
to views in which men, and women, and children
were the chief objects of interest. All seemed to
flow from his pencil so easily that people scarcely
enough understood how hard he worked. He
must have worked very hard to produce so
much variety in constant succession week
after week for more than 20 years. He died,
too, in harness, working to the last, and
working, indeed, beyond his strength. 'With cha-
racteristic generosity he made unusual exertions in
aid of his relatives, and his labours were latterly
more severe than they need have been if he had had
only to think of himself and his household. These
anxieties and exertions have at length struck him
down—and who is there to fill his place ? A good,
great man, of fine and rare genius, has gone from
among us,and we shall not know how much he was to
us until we discover by his loss that nature does not
often produce such artists as John Leech. One of
our greatest artists, Sir Edwin Landseer, has said
that there is scarcely a sketch of Mr. Leech's which
is not worthy to be framed by itself and hung on
our walls. Other artists are equally strong in his
praise. No mar envied him. The public at large
think more of the human interest that belongs to
his drawings and the amusement which may be de.
rived from them. But, over and above all this, they
have qualities which, notwithstanding the lowli-
nose of the material employed, will hereafter confer
on Mr. Leech's sketches a very high renown es
works of art.
To these few observations we append the follow-
ing letter, which will have a sad interest at the
present moment. When Mr. Bass proposed to bring
a bill into Parliament relating to street music he
received a number of letters from various persons
who wished him success. He published these
letters, and among them we find the following. We
will only add that, though Mr. Leech suffered
much, his life was not supposed to be in immediate
danger. Ho went out to consult Dr. Quain on
Friday, and there was a child's party in his home
at the time of his death :
" Punch Office, 85, Fleet-street, 231 Muy, 1861.
" Sir, --I venture upon what might possibly be consi-
dered an impertinence, were not the subject of my note of
public interest.
" I am so greatly interested in the success of your mea•

sure for the regulation of street music that I am desirous of
strengthening your hands by putting you in possession of
some facts within my knowledge. I formerly lived in GJr-
don-street, Gordon-square, but was compelled to quit Lon-
don to escape the distressing consequences of street music,
although Gordon-street was comparatively a quiet locality.
A dear friend of mine, and one to whom the public has been
indebted fur 20 years for weekly supplies of innocent amuse-
ment, and whose name will End a place in the future history
of Art, has not been so fortunate. He lived in Brunswick.
square, and remained there until the nervous system was
so seriously affr cted by the continual disturbance to which
he was subjected while at work that he was compelled to
abandon a most desirable home and seek a retreat at Ken-
sington. After expending considerable sums to make his
present residence convenient fir his art work—placing
double windows to the front of his house, ice.. he is again
driven from his home by the continual visitation of street
bands and organ grinders. The effect upon his health pro-
duced—on my honour, by the causes I have named—is so
serious that he is forbidden to take horse exercise, or indulge
in fast walking, as a palpitation of the heart has been pro-
duced—a form of angina pectoris, I believe—and his friends
are most anxiously concerned for his safety. He is ordered
to Homburg, and I know that the expatriation will entail a
loss of nearly £5O a week upon him just at present. lam
sure I need not withhold from Sou the name of this poor
gentleman—it is Mr John Leech.

"If those gentlemen who laugh at complaints such as this
letter contains were to know what are the natural penalties
of constant brain work, they would not encourage or defend
such unnecessary inflictions as street music entails upon
some of the benefactors of their age. Such men akia the
last to interfere with the enjoyilentp of Moir -poorei? fel-
low-labouters, but they claim to be allowed to pursue their
calling in peace, and to have the comfort of their homes
secured to them. All they ask is to have the same immu-
nity from the annoyances of street music as the rest of the
community have from dustmen's bells, post-horns, and other
unnecessary disturbance. The objection to street noises is
not a matter of taste. It involves the progress of hontst
labour and the avoidance of great mental affliction.
"Apologising for the liberty I have taken,
" Believe me, yours faithfully,
"M. T. Bass, Esq., M.P." "MARK. LEMON.

SPIRIT OF THE
_PUBLIC JOURNALS.

•

• TEE "LONDON REVIEW" ON THE EARLDOM OF
WICKLOW.—The reverses of fortune are not to be
ccmpared to those which men bring upon them-
selves by their vices. If chance makes them penni.
less, they have still left their energies and their
self-respect. • They can battle against the world,
though they are obliged to put off most of its come
forts, and can feel, even if they sink in the struggle,
that they have foUght their light well, though not
successfully. It is otherwise when men involve

themselves in ruin by wanton folly or the indulg-
ence of degrading propensities. In the life of each
a man there is nothing to respect. We would
rather blot out all trace of him, and forget, when
he has gone his way, that such a being ever cum-
bered the ground. Ho has been an enemy to him:
self and to all who have come within his influence;
as well to those who have ministered to his vices as
to those who have suffered by them. He has been
a disgrace to his name and a scandal to the world.
And yet it may be that, with all this, the source of
his errors has not
,been so much an original
baseness as a softness of temper, an absence of the
sense of responsibility, vacuity' of -intellect, and
exemption. from the necessity .of labour. If the
uses of adversity are not precisely sweet they are
for the most pare wholesome. There is an energy
within us which some way or other must be em-
ployed. We may appease it by healthy toil of any
kind, or we may deaden its cravings by the indul-
gence of ourpassions. Wise men take the one course,
fools Ilia ocher: Yet the fool's vices may have had
their !origin in nothing worse than weakness, which
the necessity of labour might have fostered into
strength. 'lf, in his last moments, the unfortunate
man who:died last week in a brothel in oile of the
lowest slums in the neighbourhood of Dublin could
have contrasted his death-bed and its surroundings
with his social sta'e, his opportunities end expecta-
tions, he might have cursed the hour which brought
him into the world with the certainty, of most of
these advantages, and withahe stronglinssibility of
1 enjoying all of them. It ' rid designate before
one's birth in what posit
torn, it would not et' iris wis should be
cfici:lncy of judg-
ment to resolve on' Le leieg into the woild
as did the rate William George Howard.
Many years before his death he was presumptive
heir to the earldom of Wicklow; and though, if a
man had thb right to select to which out of a d( z,2u
earldoms he would like to succeed, it would not be
difficult to choose a more attractive one than that of
Wicklow, it twist be admitted Cap•ain Howard's
prosptct of succession was rot to be looked down
upon. Ile was, to say the least, nobly born. It
the revenues which ho had the strong probability
of inheriting were not immense, they were sufficient
to enable him to raise very large sums of money
from the Jews. When, some years ago, he came
before the Insolvent Court, his debts were stated at
little. if anything, less than £lOO,OOO. And this
enormous sum had been raised upon post obit bonds.
Yet in the history of this man we find not a single
trace of any feeling that he owed to himself or to
others the duty of living decently for a single day.
His associates were the lowest of the low, the vilest
of the vile. In the peerage he ranked as heir to
an earldom. In society the most abandoned and
despicable knew him and saluted him as " Billy."
And when last week he bade farewell to the world
he had scandilised, the historian of his last hours
was an " unfortunate" in whose arms he expired.
In such miserable companionship did the heir to the
earldom of Wicklow breathe his last—in the prime
of manhood, with hostages given to fortune, in a
wife who had borne him one child and was about to
bear him another. It would appear that, as if led
by the instincts which had debased him from his
early youth, he had left the roof which sheltered
wife and child to close his days in a manner more
befitting his antecedents than their society. He
had known the woman in whose house he died for
eleven months, and on the Tuesday week before
his death he took up his quarters with her. It is a
dreary narrative that we now learn from her lips.
He told her he had been ill, He complained of
cramps and diarrhea, but would neither see a medi-
cal man nor take medicine. He would take whisky ;
and day after day he lay in bed drinking whisky—
sometimes a quart a day ; and, when he found that
whisky did him no good, drinking brandy. During
the ten days preceding his death, he appears only
to have eaten one egg and one chop, but not to have
retained either on his stomach. Day after day his
cry was the same—" whisky." And so drifting out
to sea, the wretched man spent his last hour, till
on 'Wednesday week he became delirious, craving
to his last breath for drink. "He continued
wandering and delirious," says the unfortunate who
attended him, " up to the time of his death. It was
at half-past ten o'clock, and he had been asking me
to lift him out of bed all day. I had promised to
raise him up, and when I caught his hand to raise
him he said, ' Don't catch me.' I then put my
hand behind his back, but he said let me lie down,
and ho fell back. I then heard something in his
throat, but I did not think he was dying. He died
then, but I did not know he was dead. I asked him
to speak to me, but he did not, for he was dead."
So passed the scion of a noble house. Had he been
born the son of one of its labourers, he might have
had a better chance for the life of soul and body
than fell to him as the heir to its honours and re-
venues. Malicious he was not, nor an intriguer,
nor brutal, nor daring in iniquity, nor strongly
wicked. He was weak. Empty of brain, soft of
disposition, easily manipulated by the vicious, and
in his feebleness the most notably vicious of them
all. Poverty might have compelled him to labour.
He was born rich, and his rank overwhelmed him.
Ho possessed the means to distinguish or debase
himself. And of the two ambitions he chose the
latter.

THE " EXAMINER" ON SUBMARINE CABLES.—
Long submarine electric cables began six years ago
with the Atlantic cable. This extended to rather
more than 2,000 miles, with unequal depths, vary.
ing from the height of an Irish round tower to that
of the peak of Teneriffa. It held together just long
enough to allow her Majesty the Queen of England
and the President of the then United, now the dis-
united, States to exchange compliments, and to
enable the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to make a
knight of its engineer. It cost £600,000, and of
the project as at present under renewal the cost is
estimated at a sum of £700,000. Government binds
itself to guarantee a dividend of 8 per cent on the
capital, " upo❑ the completion and working of the
cable." How these very vague words may be con-
strued by lawyers we know not. If, for example,
the cable, which is of double the strength and size
of its predecessor, should work well for a whole
month and then snap and perish like its predecessor,
would the guarantee be effective? If it would, the
public will be burdened with an annual and per-
petual charge of £56,000 per annum. But the
guarantee would seem to apply equally to the sum
I aid out on the first cable, for it is dated 1857, that
is, before this was laid, and in this case the annual
burden to the State in perpetuity, and no benefit
received, would amount to £104,000! The tele-