There is nothing insular about mr. Punch. Judging by his features, familiar though these be and long as they have been typical of English humour, he is not without some trace of foreign origin. Indeed, we fancy that were a very searching enquiry to be made into his ancestry we might find he had a far-off forebear who was, let us say, Italian! Perhaps we have here the explanation of his breadth of mind and wide sym pathy which, however deeply rooted in the good soil of old England, are by no means absolutely delimited by our coast line.