American humour is not always to English taste. And, conversely, English humour, as represented by _Punch_, has not always commended itself to American critics, though nothing could be more generous than the tribute to _Punch_ paid by New York _Life_ during the late war. At an earlier date we remember a picture in an American comic journal representing a room of torture, crowded with thumbscrews and racks and other engines of malignity, with a pile of volumes of _Punch_ enthroned in the place of honour. In this context one recalls with satisfaction that _Punch_ extended a cordial welcome to two great American humorists--Artemus Ward and Mark Twain--in the 'sixties and early 'seventies. Artemus Ward was in broken health when he visited our shores in 1866, but his lectures at the Egyptian Hall were an immense success, and elicited the admiration of such diverse critics as John Bright, Richard Holt Hutton, of the _Spectator_, who wrote an admirable appreciation of them in his paper, and _Punch_. Hutton once told the present writer that he was never so convulsed with laughter in his life as when listening to the lecture. It may be read in Artemus Ward's collected works, and it is very good reading in cold print, but the effect was enormously enhanced by the contrast between the lecturer's cadaverous appearance and melancholy manner on the one hand, and the extravagant farce of his utterances on the other. This is well brought out in _Punch's_ notice of "A Ward that deserves watching":-- _Mr. Punch_ would recommend "funny men" on or off the stage, to hear Artemus Ward "speak his piece" at the Egyptian Hall, and then, in so far as in them lies, to go and do likewise.... Oh, if these unhappy abusers of gag, grimace, and emphasis--these grating, grinding, grinning, over-doing obtruders of themselves in the wrong place--could take a leaf out of Artemus Ward's "piece," and learn to be as quiet, grave, and unconscious in their delivery of the words set down for them as he is in speaking his own! Unlike them, Artemus Ward has brains. That is, of course, beyond hope in their case. But if they could once be made to feel how immensely true humour is enhanced by the unforced way it drops out of A.W.'s mouth, they might learn to imitate what, probably, it is hopeless to expect they could understand. To be sure, Artemus Ward's delivery of fun is eminently "un-English." But there are a good many things English one would like to see un-Englished. Gross overdone low comedy is one of them. Snobbishness is another. The two go hand in hand. One of the best of many good points of Artemus Ward's piece is that it is quite free from all trace of either of these English institutions. And it is worth noting, that we owe to another native of the States, Joseph Jefferson, the best example lately set us of unforced and natural low comedy. His _Rip Van Winkle_ was very un-English, too.