The Grosvenor Gallery, opened in 1877, at once eclipsed Burlington House as the favourite target of _Punch's_ ridicule and caricature, and as the home of all the tendencies which he repudiated in the manifesto quoted above. His general attitude is very much that of Gilbert in _Patience_; and Burne-Jones and Rossetti (whom he miscalls "D. S. Rosetti" as late as 1880) were indiscriminately confounded in dispraise along with the lesser fry. Tennyson's "Palace of Art" is perverted into a vehicle for assailing Pre-Raphaelitism. The "Dream of Queer Women" in 1878 gives prominence to the artistic type, and a visit to the Grosvenor Gallery in the early summer of the same year inspires "The Haunted Limbo; a May-night Vision" animated by the same hostility:-- Those women, ah, those women! They were white, Blue, green, and grey--all hues, save those of nature, Bony of frame, and dim, and dull of sight, And parlous tall of stature. _Ars longa est_--aye, very long indeed, And long as Art were all these High-Art ladies, And wan and weird; one might suppose the breed A cross 'twixt earth and Hades. If poor Persephone to the Dark King Had children borne, after that rape from Enna, Much so might they have looked, when suffering From too much salts and senna. Many their guises, but no various grace Or changeful charm relieved their sombre sameness Of form contorted, and cadaverous face, And limp lopsided lameness. [Sidenote: _Homage to Cruikshank_] Leighton's "Athlete and Python" in 1877 had been saluted as "a statue at last," and _Punch_ welcomed his election as P.R.A. in the following year, with an excellent portrait by Sambourne of "the right man in the right place." It was in 1878 again that _Punch_ turned aside from the flagellation of his pet aversions to pay homage to the genius of George Cruikshank, who died on February 1:-- England is the poorer by what she can ill spare--a man of genius. Good, kind, genial, honest and enthusiastic George Cruikshank, whose frame appeared to have lost so little of its wiry strength and activity, whose brain seemed as full of fire and vitality at fourscore as at forty, has passed away quietly and painlessly after a few days' struggle. He never worked for _Punch_, but he always worked with him, putting his unresting brain, his skill--in some forms of Art unrivalled--and his ever productive fancy, at the service of humanity and progress, good works, and good will to man. His object, like our own, was always to enforce truth and urge on improvement by the powerful forces of fun and humour, clothed in forms sometimes fanciful, sometimes grotesque, but never sullied by a foul thought, and ever dignified by a wholesome purpose.