Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/514

 an easterly direction. In front of the picture one sees far down below the blue waters of the Bristol Channel, while behind the picturesque little church nestles among the trees. In the churchyard an old man is mowing down the long grass amid the graves, while two or three little children scatter flowers on one of them. This picture was unfinished at the time of his death. A strange coincidence that he should have chosen such a scene for his last picture, when, as far as man can judge, he had no sort of reason for thinking that death was so near; stranger still, that on his return home he chose for the sketch a black frame, as if to clothe it in the garb of mourning for its maker. There it remains on his easel, unfinished still, as if to tell of one cut off so suddenly, not indeed in the summer of life, but in a mellow autumn, which seemed to give promise of many years of good work still to be done. But the time had come when the little sprites who peopled his dreams of earth, were to be exchanged for the angel forms who were to welcome the faithful servant to his reward in heaven. On the 10th of December, as he was preparing to return from the Athenæum club, Mr. Doyle was struck down by apoplexy. An ambulance was procured, and he was carried home. He never regained the power of speech, and it is doubtful whether he was ever again conscious, though the priest who anointed him for his journey from thence to heaven thought that he detected some traces of a joyful acquiescence in the rite. The next morning, in the home where the last years had been spent in quiet peaceful pursuit of the art he passionately loved, his simple, innocent, loyal soul passed away from earth to heaven."

It will be admitted that Mr. Tenniel joined the ranks of the graphic satirists at the commencement of troublous times. The nations of Europe, with the exception of England, whose slumbers still remained unbroken, were all more or less awake. Prussia, insufficiently avenged (as she herself considered) at Waterloo for the unendurable humiliations which Napoleon had heaped upon her