"If you _ever_ have the time--which I never have--I should feel so glad if you would go some day and see how the 'party' at Kensington has done his work. I suppose 'that little form' of paying the bill must very soon be gone through, and I should like to know from a competent authority that the work has been well and properly done. "How about the hunting? I am continually tormented here by noble sportsmen going by my window in full fig. "Yours always, "J. L." "6, The Terrace, Kensington, "November 27, 1862. "MY DEAR CHARLEY, "I am obliged to go to St. Leonards to-night, but I should be very glad if you would to-morrow, Friday (as you propose), look at my new house. In the corner of one of the new rooms I see it looks a little damp, although they considered it dry before they papered. I must say I am pleased with the new residence, and I think by degrees I shall be able to make it pretty comfortable. We shall hardly get in here, I expect, much before Christmas. There is yet so much to do. I shall be very glad of any hints about improvements that may occur to you. "Kind regards, and believe me, "Always yours, "J. L." There is amongst the pictures of "Life and Character" a drawing of a sportsman who has been thrown from his horse. He has fallen upon his head, and as he raises it, stunned and bewildered, and but half conscious, the sensations that must have possessed him are realized for us in a manner so marvellous, so wonderful in its originality and truth, as to convince one that the accident must have happened to the man who drew the picture; and this was the case, for the fallen man was Leech himself, says Mr. Adams, who in charging a fence was thrown, his horse falling at the same time. If I had been told that the sensations inevitable under the circumstances were required to be reproduced by pencil and paper, I should have said such a feat was beyond the reach of art; but there they are! As the prostrate man looks up, he sees sparks of fire, horse's head, legs, hoofs mingled together in a whirl of confusion round his prostrate figure. [Illustration] No doubt the work he undertook for _Bell's Life in London_, a long-established and long-discontinued paper, in which sport of all kinds was the most prominent feature--and which occupied much of Leech's time in his youthful days--contributed to the creation of a taste and love for field sports that always distinguished him. Quite a band of comic artists, including Cruikshank, Kenny Meadows, "Phiz," Seymour, and Leech, contributed sketches illustrative of a variety of subjects by a variety of authors; Leech's work being easily distinguishable from that of his brethren of the pencil. CHAPTER XIII. "COMIC GRAMMAR" AND "COMIC HISTORY."