But from that time to the end of the war all was misapprehension and perversity. In July, 1861, "Naughty Jonathan," an ill-favored little boy carrying a toy flag, addresses the majesty of Britain thus: "You _sha'n't_ interfere, mother--and you ought to be on my side--and it's a great shame--and I don't care--and you _shall_ interfere--and I won't have it." During the Mason and Slidell imbroglio the Tenniel cartoons were not "soothing" to the American mind. "Do what's right, my son," says the burly sailor, Jack Bull, to little Admiral Jonathan, "or I'll blow you out of the water." Again, we have a family dinner scene. John Bull at the head of the table, and Lord Russell the boy in waiting. _Enter_ "Captain Jonathan, F.N.," who says, "Jist looked in to see if thar's any rebels he-arr." Upon which Mr. Bull remarks, "Oh, indeed! John, look after the plate-basket, and then fetch a policeman." This was in allusion to a supposed claim on the part of Mr. Seward of a right to search ships for rebel passengers. Then we have Mr. Lincoln as a "coon" in a tree, and Colonel Bull aiming his blunderbuss at him. "Air you in earnest, colonel?" asks the coon. "I am," replies the mighty Bull. "Don't fire," says the coon; "I'll come down." And accordingly Mason and Slidell were speedily released. In a similar spirit most of the events of the war were treated; and when the war had ended, there was still shown in _Punch_, as in the English press generally, the same curious, inexplicable, and total ignorance of the feelings of the American people. What an inconceivable perversity it was to attribute Mr. Sumner's statement of the damage done to the United States by the alliance which existed for four years between the owners of England and the masters of the South to a Yankee grab for excessive damages! In all the long catalogue of national misunderstandings there is none more remarkable than this. Mr. Tenniel from the first derided the idea that any particular damage had been done by the _Alabama_ and her consorts: certainly there was no damage, he thought, upon which a "claim" could be founded. "Claim for damages against _me_?" cries big Britannia, in one of his pictures of October, 1865. "Nonsense, Columbia; don't be mean over money matters." [Illustration: "At the Church-gate." (Du Maurier, in _Punch_, 1872.) "So now you've been to church, Ethel! And which part of it all do you like best?" "_This_ part, mamma!"]