_Le Rire_ has published a quantity of Huard’s work, the strength and vigour of which never seems to fail. The subjects are frequently drawn from the quays of Paris, or from cafés and restaurants patronised by visitors from the provinces to the gay city. The humour of a drawing called _Plages_, in which a rather vulgar Paris tripper to the seaside, paddling with her friends, exclaims in astonished appreciation--“By Jove, sand like at Charenton” (shall we translate Putney?), is apparent to all. In these, as in all his sketches, whether drawn from a low Paris “pub,” or from an innocent village café, indoors or out, the entire truth to nature of the type chosen, the very cut and hang of every garment is absolutely convincing, and unerringly put in with a few bold touches of the pen. A pathetic drawing is that of the poor workwoman, who has tramped out to the sordid wastes of the _fortifs_, or fortifications of Paris; and, in her enjoyment of the faint echo of the real country, there to be found, exclaims--“If I were rich I’d come here every day!” Huard has drawn for _L’Assiette au Beurre_, _L’Image_, _Le Rire_, and _Cocorico_ some remarkable military subjects, in which he has depicted the French soldier to the life. Here, we have him disclosing to a comrade on the quay his modest dreams of fortune--there, he is discussing rations with his colonel, and in another splendid double-page drawing we see him at night, shouting some rude refrain, and painting the town scarlet generally; but the finest of all is perhaps a vivid drawing in colour of a squad on a drill ground,--red caps, white suits, and a yellow background,--the whole making a most striking page. Huard is very successful with these coloured illustrations, many of which appear in _Le Rire_, and charm us with their quaint breadth and simplicity of treatment. Nothing in this way could be better than the old _concièrge_ and his dumpy wife, who are painting a cast of the “Venus of Milo” with canary yellow, and decide that it is much prettier like that, and much less indecent. For the exhibition of _La Demi Douzaine_, the little group of artists among whom he exhibits his marine work, Huard has done an excellent poster. [Illustration: _By J. Wély._ (_p. 57_)] VIII J. WÉLY Wély is one of the more recent stars in the firmament of Parisian illustrators; nevertheless he shines with a peculiar brilliance of his own.