being too serious; but that is another thing. The American humorist is hardly serious enough. For the purpose of exhibiting our friends he is like an artist with only a tube of white paint,—he is deficient in chiaroscuro. If there is some question whether the author of the Snob Papers would call the American humorist exactly by that name, there can be none that it is upon humor of the general nature of that of the author of the Snob Papers that the American "Punch" must depend for its comment on life. The typical American humorist lacks a sobriety, a sufficient seriousness to give our friends actuality and roundness, his comic atmosphere is not sufficiently dense to enable our friends to breathe in it, to live and move and have reality in it.
The defect for the purposes of "Punch" in our illustration and the defect for the purposes of "Punch" in our humor have probably a common root in the absence hitherto of a dense human life. Our art had a bias rather toward the Hudson River than toward story-telling, and our humor, one perhaps may be allowed to say, is a sort of landscape variety, with a great deal of air in it and comparatively little human interest. But if it were contrived in some unforeseen way to remedy these essential defects and we were provided with a literary illustration and a serious humor, there would still be a detail requiring attention if the American "Punch" is to bear any strong resemblance to its London prototype. One cannot help being struck in turning over its pages with how much of "Punch's" distinctive character is due to the coincidence of the social and political capitals. Its very form, the central political cartoon with the subordinate but copious social comment, seems to spring naturally from this state of affairs. The interest of its at this distance rather vapid cartoons, at first rather difficult to discover, we feel sure must reside finally in the visual acquaintance of the greater part of "Punch's" constituency with the statesmen represented. Our political cartoons are not, on the whole, so vapid, but they sadly miss this source of interest. Our statesmen are not in any sense our personal friends. Few of us are happy in a visual acquaintance with them. The Plumed Knight, the War-Horse, the Grand Old Saddle-Bags (happy collocation!), we are too apt unjustly to think of them as strange beings, possibly friends only for the American humorist, or as gods of the political Aberglaube of booms and platforms, remote and hardly to be come at by the humble tax-payer, however near to those ministering high-priests the editors of newspapers. This is not as it should be. We should know Old Saddle-Bags as a man, the father of Young Saddle-Bags; the 'bus-driver should be familiar with the Plumed Knight in the press of the avenue; and the nurse-maid in the Park should discover to her tender charge the War-Horse moving peacefully among the trees. It seems that to prepare the way for the American "Punch" the conversion of the foes of centralization is necessary; but, having accomplished this with the aid of a powerful lobby, the social capital on which to concentrate is still to seek. And in pursuing this quest we may arrive at the conclusion that American life is too dispersed and heterogeneous to give natural birth to a paper in any close degree resembling "Punch."
"Greater Britain" does very well as a shibboleth to fire the colonial heart, but as a description of the present state of things it appears painfully defective. Much in the situation, we conclude, should lead the colonial hope to keep its account rather with the anise-seed bag and the green-and-yellow coach than with the American "Punch." But nothing occurs so frequently as the unforeseen. If we are to have an American "Punch," we would fain bespeak for the inspiration of its youth as delightful a talent as his with whose name we began,—the charming, sweet-natured artist Richard Doyle. In closing the volumes of his "Punch" we find we have for him a feeling which we have not for his more famous successors,—we have an affection for him. E. C. Reynolds.
