The week has been full of deaths. Mr. William Morris,
the Socialist poet, died on the 3rd inst. ; General Sir James Abbott, the Indian hero and explorer, on the 6th ; General Trochu, who defended Paris against the Prussians, on the 7th ; and Mr. Du Manner on the 8th. The latter leaves a. whole generation the poorer of a weekly enjoyment. The phenomenal success of his novel " Trilby " has always seemed to us more or less of a craze, but no better illustrator of English society in its ordinary mood has ever lived. He was not a caricaturist, but a man who revealed to ourselves our slightly ridiculous side. He had satire in him, corrected by a. preference for sketching handsome men and pretty women, whom he observed with a keenness which had in it something of the spirit of the naturalist. "The most marked change of my time," he remarked one day to the present writer, " is the improvement in the general look of men, and more particularly of women." " That is quite true," observed Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was listening, " the English in my time have all fined down, while improving in health and height." Mr. Du Manlier was the very antithesis of Charles Keene. He could hardly draw an ugly man or woman, and even when trying to caricature, he often refined commonness away. The con- ductors of Punch are, we doubt not, doing their best, but they will hardly replace the old group, and have certainly not done it yet.
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