All of the cartoons reproduced from London _Punch_ are from the pencil of Sir John Tenniel, who, in 1901, concluded half a century of brilliant service on that journal. Tenniel was already an artist of repute when he joined the staff of _Punch_ in 1851, and for many years preceding his self-sought retirement he was recognized as incomparably the greatest caricaturist of his time--his pencil a force to be taken into account by sagacious statesmen in every forecast of the drift of public opinion. His range is not a wide one, yet within its clearly defined limits he is nearly always powerful. Although his methods are usually simple, through them he secures signal breadth and strength, while now and then he gives an impression of power such as one fancies an Angelo might have given had he amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his time. If there was any doubt in official minds respecting the necessity of sending an army to the rescue of Khartoum, it vanished when Tenniel drew his picture of General Gordon standing behind an earthwork and looking across the desert for a glimpse of the expected redcoats. That touched the heart of England, and was more potent than the fiercest denunciation from the Opposition bench of the Gladstone ministry's inaction in the Soudan. Tenniel is first of all a satirist, but he has seldom been either unjust or unfair in his work. His longest and most memorable departure from fairness was when, in common with the ruling class of England generally, he misinterpreted our Civil War and caricatured the chief actor therein with astonishing perversity. Still, he was not more frequently or more deeply in the wrong than some of our own politicians, who could not plead his excuse of distance from the scene, and, to his credit, be it said, when once convinced of his error he made prompt and generous amends therefor. Nothing could have been more fitting nor finer in its way than his design, already referred to, which showed Britannia laying a wreath on the bier of the martyred President and which was accompanied by these appreciative lines from the pen of Tom Taylor: |You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, _You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Brood for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkept, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please. You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain. Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew; Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurril jester, is there room for _you?_ Yes, he has lived to shame me for my sneer, To lame my pencil and confute my pen--