But, bless us, one wants to describe, and praise, and purchase them all!  A KEENE drawing, almost any KEENE drawing, is “a thing of beauty and a joy for ever” to everyone who has an eye for admirable art and adorable drollery.  And good as is the fun of these drawings, the graphic force, and breadth, and delicacy, and freshness, and buoyancy, and breeziness, and masterly ease, and miraculous open-airiness, and general delightfulness of them, are yet more marked and marvellous.  Time would fail to tell a tithe of their merits.  An essay might be penned on any one of them—­but fate forbid it should be, unless a sort of artistic CHARLES LAMB could take the task in hand.  Better far go again to New Bond Street and pass another happy hour or two with the ruddy rustics and ’cute cockneys, the Scotch elders and Anglican curates, the stodgy “Old Gents” and broad-backed, bunchy middle-class matrons, the paunchy port-swigging-buffers, and hungry but alert street-boys, the stertorous cabbies, and chatty ’bus-drivers, the “festive” diners-out and wary waiters, the Volunteers and vauriens, the Artists and ’Arries, the policemen and sportsmen, amidst the incomparable street scenes, and the equally inimitable lanes, coppices, turnip-fields and stubbles, green glades and snowbound country roads of wonderful, ever-delightful, and—­for his comrades and the Public alike—­all-too-soon-departed CHARLES KEENE!

Nothing really worthy of his astonishing life-work, of even that part of it exhibited here, could be written within brief compass, even by the most appreciative, admiring, and art-loving of his sorrowing friends or colleagues.  Let the British Public go to New Bond Street, and see for itself, in the very hand-work of this great artist, what he made manifest during so many years in the pages of Punch, namely, the supreme triumph of “Black-and-White” in the achievements of its greatest master.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  KING STORK AND KING LOG.

AN OLD FABLE REVERSED.]

  The Frogs, who lived a free and easy life
      (As in the ancient fable)
  Though not quite clear from internecine strife,
      Fancied they were well able
  To do without a King.  Batrachian wisdom
  Disdains the rule of fogeydom and quizdom,
  And Frogs as soon would take to bibs and corals,
  As ask a “King who might inspect their morals”
  From Jupiter.  Then ’twas Juventus Mundi;
  The true King-maker now is—­Mrs. GRUNDY,
  And she insisted that our modern Frogs
  Should have a King—­the woodenest of King Logs. 
  At first this terrified our Frogs exceedingly,
  And, sometimes passionately, sometimes pleadingly,
      They grumbled and protested;
  But finding soon how placidly Log rested
  Prone in the pool with mighty little motion,
  Of danger they abandoned the wild notion,