"SUPPLEMENTARY NOTICE.

The Vulture.(FromLa Ménagerie Impériale, 1871.)

The recent events in France, beginning with the outbreak of the war with Prussia, have elicited countless caricatures and series of caricatures. The downfall of the "Empire," as it was called, gave the caricaturists an opportunity of vengeance which they improved. A citizen of New York possesses a collection of one thousand satirical pictures published in Paris during the war and under the Commune. A people who submit to a despised usurper are not likely to be moderate or decent in the expression of their contempt when, at length, the tyrant is no longer to be feared. It was but natural that the French court should insult the remains of Louis XIV., to whom living it had paid honors all but divine; for it is only strength and valor that know how to be either magnanimous or dignified in the moment of deliverance. Many of the people of Paris, when they heard of the ridiculous termination near Sedan of the odious fiction called the Empire, behaved like boys just rid of a school-master whom they have long detested and obeyed. Of course they seized the chalk and covered all the blackboards with monstrous pictures of the tyrant. The flight of his wife soon after called forth many scandalous sketches similar to those which disgraced Paris when Marie Antoinette was in prison awaiting the execution of her husband and her own trial. Many of these burlesques, however, were fair and legitimate. The specimen given on the next page, entitled "Partant pour la Syrie," which appeared soon after the departure of Eugénie and her advisers, was a genuine hit. It was exhibited in every window, and sold whereverin France the victorious Germans were not. A member of the American legation, amidst the rushing tide of exciting events and topics, chanced to save a copy, from which it is here reduced.

Partant pour la Syrie.(Published in Paris after the Flight of Eugénie.)

Among the "albums" of siege sketches, we come upon one executed by the veterans Cham and Daumier, the same Henri Daumier whom Louis Philippe imprisoned, and Thackeray praised, forty years ago. In this collection we see Parisian ladies, in view of the expected bombardment, bundled up in huge bags of cotton, leading lap-dogs protected in the same manner. An ugly Prussian touches off a bomb aimed at the children in the Jardin du Luxembourg. King William decorates crutches and wooden legs as "New-year's presents for his people." An apothecary sells a plaster "warranted to prevent wounds, provided the wearer never leaves his house." A workman goes to church for the first time in his life, and gives as a reason for so unworkman-like a proceeding that "a man don't have to stand in line for the blessed bread." A volunteergoes on a sortie with a pillow under his waistcoat "to show the enemy that we have plenty of provisions." All these are by the festive Cham.

Daumier does not jest. He seems to have felt that Louis Napoleon, like a child-murderer, was a person far beneath caricature—a creature only fit to be destroyed and hurried out of sight and thought forever. Amidst the dreary horrors of the siege, Henri Daumier could only think of its mean and guilty cause. One of his few pictures in this collection is a row of four vaults, the first bearing the inscription, "Died on the Boulevard Montmartre, December 2d, 1851;" the second, "Died at Cayenne;" the third, "Died at Lambessa;" the fourth, "Died at Sedan, 1870." But even then Daumier, true to the vocation of a patriotic artist, dared to remind his countrymen that it was they who had reigned in the guise of the usurper. A wild female figure standing on a field of battle points with one hand to the dead, and with the other to a vase filled with ballots, on which is printed the wordOui. She cries, "These killed those!"

During the Commune the walls of Paris were again covered with drawings and lithographs of the character which Frenchmen produce after long periods of repression: Louis Napoleon crucified between the two thieves, Bismarck and King William; Thiers in the pillory covered and surrounded with opprobrious inscriptions; Thiers, Favre, and M'Mahon placidly looking down from a luxurious upper room upon a slain mother and child ghastly with blood and wounds; landlords, lean and hungry, begging for bread, while fat and rosy laborers bask idly in the sun; little boy Paris smashing his playthings (Trochu, Gambetta, and Rochefort) and crying for the moon; "Paris eating a general a day;" Queen Victoria in consternation trying to stamp out the horrid centipede,International, while "Monsieur John Boule, Esquire," stands near with the habeas-corpus act in his hand; naked France pressing Rochefort to her bosom; and hundreds more, describable and indescribable.

Gavarni.

It remains to give a specimen of recent French caricature of another kind. Once more, after so many proofs of its impolicy, the Government of France attempts to suppress such political caricature as is not agreeable to it, while freely permitting the publication of pictures flagrantly indecent. At no former period, not even in Voltaire's time, could the French press have been more carefully hedged about with laws tending to destroy its power to do good, and increase its power to do harm. The Government treats the press very much after the manner of those astute parents who forbid their children to see a comedy of Robertson or a play of Shakspeare, but make it up to them by giving them tickets to the variety show. A writer familiar with the subject gives us some astounding details:

"There exist at present," he remarks, "sixty-eight laws in France, all intended to suppress, curtail, weaken, emasculate, and even to strangle newspapers; but not one single law to foster them in their dire misfortune. If any private French gentleman wishes to establish a newspaper, he must first writeto the Préfet de Police, on paper of a certain size and duly stamped, and give this functionary notice that he intends to establish a newspaper. His signature has, of course, to be countersigned by the Maire. But if the paper our friend wishes to establish is purely literary, he has first to make his declaration to the police, who rake up every information that is possible about the unfortunate projector. After that, the Ministère de l'Intérieur institutes another searching inquiry, and these two take seven or eight months at least. When theenquêteand thecontre-enquêteare ended, theavis favorableof the whole Ministry is necessary before the paper can be published. Another six months to wait yet; but this is not all. Our would-be newspaper proprietor or editor possesses now the right of publishing his paper; but he has not yet the right to sell it. In order to obtain this, he must begin anew all his declarations and attempts, so that his purely literary paper may be sold at all the ordinary book-sellers' shops. But if he wishes it to be sold in the streets—or, in other words, in the kiosques—he must address himself to another officead hoc, and then the Commissaire de Police sends the answer of the Préfet de Police to the unfortunate proprietor, editor, or publisher, who by this time must be nearly at his wits' end.

But even this is not all. If the unhappy projector proposes to illustrate his paper, his labors are still far from ending. "He must," continues the writer, "obtain, of course, the permission of the Ministère de l'Intérieur for Paris, or of the prefects for the provinces. The Ministère asks for the opinion of the Governor of Paris, who asks, in his turn, for the opinion of the Bureau de Censure, a body of gentlemen working in the dark, and which, to the eye of the obtuse foreigner, appears only established to prevent any political insinuations to be made, but to allow the filthiest drawings to be publicly exposed for sale, and the most indecent innuendoes to be uttered on the stage or in novels. The Censure demands, under the penalty of seizing, forbidding, and bringing before the court, that every sketch or outline shall be submitted to it. When this is done, and the Censure finds nothing to criticise in it, it requires further that the drawing,when finished, be anew laid before it, and, if the drawing be colored, it must be afresh inspected after the dangerous paints have been smirched on. When our happy editor wishes to publish the caricature or the portrait of any one, he can not do so unless he has the permission of the gentleman or lady whose likeness he wishes to produce."

Honoré Daumier.

Such was the measure of freedom enjoyed in the French republic governed by soldiers. But this elaborate system of repression can be both evaded and turned to account by the caricaturist. During the last two or three years, a writer who calls himself Touchatout has been amusing Paris by a series of satirical biographies, each preceded by a burlesque portrait. But occasionally the Censure refuses its consent to the insertion of the portrait. The son of Louis Napoleon was one individual whom the Censure thus endeavored to protect. Observe the result. Instead of exhibiting to the people of Paris a harmless picture representing the head of the unfortunate young man mounted upon a pair of diminutive legs, Touchatout prints at the head of his biographical sketch the damaging burlesque subjoined:

RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,AND CENSURE.THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OFVélocipède IV.HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE.IT CAN BE FOUND AT ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS.

RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,AND CENSURE.THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OFVélocipède IV.HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE.

RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,AND CENSURE.

THE PUBLICATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF

Vélocipède IV.

HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN BY THE CENSURE.

IT CAN BE FOUND AT ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS.

I translate the burlesque biography that follows the above. It may servealso as a specimen of the new literary commodity of which the Parisians seem so fond, and for which a name has been invented—blague—which means amusingly malign gossip.

"Vélocipède IV.(Napoleon-Eugene-Louis-Jean-Joseph, Prince Imperial, more commonly known by the name of:) born at Paris, March 16th, 1856. He is the son of Napoleon III. and of the Empress, Eugénie de Montijo.

"Here a parenthesis. The Trombinoscope has often been accused of brutality. When we traced the profile of the ex-empress, the cry was that we had no consideration even for women. We replied that, in our eyes, sovereigns were no more women than were the she petroleum-throwers. To-day there will not be wanting people to say that we do not spare children; and we shall reply, as we have often said before, that sons are not responsible for the crimes of their fathers until the day when they set up a claim to profit by them. If, during the two years that the Trombinoscope has plied his vocation, we have not aimed a shot at the young hero of Sarrebruck, it is precisely because childhood inspires respect in us. If this youth, when consulted upon his calling, had replied, 'My desire is to be an architect or a shoe-maker,' we should have had nothing to say. But mark: scarcely has he ceased to be a child when, on being questioned as to his choice of a trade, he answers, 'I wish to be emperor.' Oh, indeed! The son of Napoleon III. has entered upon his career; he is a child no more; and the Trombinoscope re-enters into all his rights.

"We said, then, that Eugene-Napoleon was born March 16th, 1856. The doctor who received him perceived that he had uponla fesse droitea mass of odd little red marks. Upon examining closely this phenomenon, he perceived that these marks were a representation of the bombardment of the house Sallanvrouze in December, 1851, upon the Boulevard Montmartre. All was there: the intrepid artillery of Canrobert, smashing the shop-windows and pulverizing a newspaper stand; the nurses disemboweled upon the seats; the bootblack on the corner having his customer's leg carried away from between his hands, etc., etc.

"The empress during her pregnancy had read Victor Hugo's 'Napoleon the Little,' and had been much struck with the chapter in which thecoup d'étatis so well related. They concealed from the people this tattooing—this far too significant trade-mark—and they placed the new-born child in a cradle with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor around his neck. The high dignitaries then advanced to prostrate themselves before the august infant, who sucked his thumb, and they relate, in this connection, in the blatant clap-trap History of Napoleon III., that one of the courtiers narrowly escaped falling into disgrace by appearing stupefied to see the Prince Imperial decorated at the age of fifteen hours. Happily he recovered himself in time, and replied to the emperor, who had remarked his surprise:

"'Sire! I am indeed astonished that His Highness is only commander.'

"To the age of eighteen months, the Prince Imperial did nothing remarkable; but, dating from that moment, he became a veritable prodigy. Along with his first pair of trousers, his father ordered two dozen witticisms of the editors ofFigaro. These sallies at once went the rounds of the domestic press, and the Prince Imperial had not reached his sixth year when he passed, in the rural districts, for having all the wit which his mother lacked. Thus, in fullFigaro, appeared one morning a crayon drawing attributed to the Prince Imperial, at the age when as yet he only executed insepiaupon the flaps of his shirt.

"This marvel of precocity astonished all men who had need of a sub-prefectship or a place in the tobacco excise; and this to such a point that they were not in the least surprised when, during the Exhibition of 1867, a reporter prepared his left button-hole to receive the recompense due to the brave by printing—in the self-sameFigaro, by heavens!—that the little prince, then eleven years of age, had discussed with engineers of experience the strong and weak points of all the wheel work in the grand hall of machinery.

"The years which followed were for the young phenomenon only a succession of triumphs of the same calibre, until the day when his father declared that, in order to complete his imperial education, nothing was wanting to him but to learn to ride the velocipede.

"It need not be said that he learned this noble art, like all the others, by just blowing upon it.

"Meanwhile, Eugene-Napoleon had achieved various grades in the army. Named Corporal in the Grenadiers of the Guard at the age of twenty-two months, one evening when he had not cried for being put to bed at eight o'clock, he had been made successively pioneer, sergeant, sergeant-major, and adjutant of the same corps. When he made some difficulties about swallowing his iodide of potassium in the morning, they promised him promotion, and that encouraged him. From glass to glass, he won the epaulet of sub-lieutenant; and at the moment when the war with Prussia broke out he had just deserved the epaulet of lieutenant by letting them give him, without crying, an injection with salt, which inspired him with profound horror.

"At the very beginning of the war, his father took him to the Prussian frontier, in order to make him pass by his side under triumphal arches into Berlin, which the armyfive times readyof Marshal Lebœuf was to enter within four days at the very latest.

"At the combat of Sarrebruck, that brilliant military pantomime which the Emperor caused to be performed under the guise of a parade, the Prince Imperial became the admiration of Europe by picking up on the field of battle 'a bullet which had fallen near him,' said the dispatch of Napoleon to Eugénie. 'From the pocket of a mischievous staff officer,' history will add.

"Since our disasters, the Prince Imperial grows and stuffs himself in exile,with some devoted servants whose salaries go on as before, and a Spanish mother who teaches him to love France as the most lucrative of the monarchical tobacco-excise offices in Europe.

"Recently the Prince Imperial, for the first time, declared his pretension to the throne by thanking the eight Bonapartists, who had hired a smoking compartment upon the Northern Line in order to present their compliments—and their bill—on the occasion of the 15th of August. That was the first act of a Pretender, the cutting of whose teeth still torments him, and whose new pantaloons become too short at the end of eight days. It was this which decided us to write his rather meagre biography.

"As to his person, the Prince Imperial is a perfect type of a slobbering aspirant of the eighth order. In his exterior, at least, he does not seem to have derived much from his father; but he has the empty, vain, and silly expression of his mother. He represents sufficiently well one of those married boobies whose insignificance condemns them to live upon their income in a little provincial city, working six hours a day their part of third cornet in a raw philharmonic society, while their wives at home make cuckolds of them with the officers of the garrison.

"Dates to be supplied by the collectors of the Trombinoscope.

"Eugene-Napoleon, attaining his majority March 16th, 1877, demands a settlement from his mother. She confesses to him that of his maternal fortune there remain but thirty-two francs. 'What has become, then,' he asks,'of all the fund which, during the twenty years of papa's empire, was produced by the exemption money of the conscripts for whom substitutes were not obtained, by the buttons which were wanting to the gaiters, and the gaiters which were wanting to the buttons?' 'What has become of it?' said the Empress. 'Do you suppose that, during these seven years past, I have maintainedourFrench journals with my old chignons?' Eugene-Napoleon replied to his mother: 'Then, if I have no longer a sou with which to take Mandarine to the races, hand me one of papa's riding-jackets that I may make a descent at Boulogne, to dethrone Louis Philippe II. He makes a descent at Boulogne, the —— 18—, with five drunken men and the little Conneau, all disguised as circus staff officers. They put him on his trial; he is convicted the —— 18—; is pardoned the —— 18—; repeats the performance the —— 18—. The Republic having turned out Louis Philippe II., Eugene-Napoleon re-enters France the —— 18—as simple citizen. The republicans, who are always just so foolish, permit him to be elected deputy the —— 18—, and president the —— 18—. He seats himself upon the Republic December 2d, 18—, and re-establishes the Empire the —— 18—. The social decomposition resumes its course. Vélocipède IV. marries the —— 18—, a circus girl. The moral scale continues to rise: Blanche d'Antigny and Cora Pearl are ladies of honor at the Tuileries. The—— 18—, at the moment when Vélocipède IV. is about to engage in a war with Prussia, which he thinks will consolidate his throne, but which, considering the organization of our artillery, threatens to extend the German frontiers as far as Saint-Ouen. France stops the drain of those ruinous imitations, drives out the Emperor, and again proclaims the Republic. This time, a thing wholly unexpected, some republicans are found who, after having energetically swept France clean of all that appertains to former systems, whether pretenders, office-holders, spies, etc., etc., push their logic even to the point of bolting the door inside, in order not to be interfered with in their loyal endeavor. This device, so simple, but by which we have passed three times in a century without seeing it, succeeds to admiration; and at length it is announced, the —— 19—, that Vélocipède IV., after having been by turns, at London, keeper of a thirteen-sous bazaar, pickpocket, circus performer, magnetizer, and dealer in lead-pencils, dies in the flower of his age from the effects of a disease which his father did not contract while presiding at a meeting of his cabinet."

With this specimen ofblaguewe may leave the caricaturists of France to fight it out with La Censure.

Upon the news-stands in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, New York, and other cities, we find the comic periodicals of Germany, particularly theFliegende Blätterof Berlin, and theBeilage der Fliegenden Blätterof Munchen, papers resemblingPunchin form and design. The American reader who turns over their leaves can not but remark the mildness of the German jokes. Compared with the tremendous and sometimes ghastly efforts of the dreadful Funny Man of the American press, the jests of the Germans are as lager-beer to the goading "cocktail" and the maddening "smash!" But, then, they are delightfully innocent. Coming from the French comic albums and papers to those of the Germans, is like emerging, after sunrise, from a masquerade ball, all gas, rouge, heat, and frenzy, into a field full of children playing till the bell rings for school. Nevertheless, the impression remains that an extremely mild joke suffices to amuse the German reader of comic periodicals.

The pictured jests, as inPunch, are the attractive feature. Observe the infantile simplicity of a few of these, taken almost at random from recent volumes of the papers just mentioned:

Two young girls, about twelve, are sitting upon a bench in a public garden. Two dandies walk past, who are dressed alike, and resemble one another. "Tell me, Fanny," says one of the girls, "are not those two gentlemen brothers?" This is the reply: "One of them is, I know for certain; but I am not quite sure about the other."

A strapping woman, sooty, wearing a man's hat, and carrying a ladder and brushes, is striding along the street. The explanation vouchsafed is the following: "The very eminent magistrate has determined to permit the widow of the meritorious chimney-sweep, Spazzicammino, to continue the business."

A silly-looking gentleman is seen conversing with a lady upon whom he has called, while a number of cats are playing about the room. "Why have you so many cats?" he asks. The lady replies: "Well, you see, my cook kept giving warning because I locked up the milk and meat, and so I got the cats as a pretext."

Two ladies are conversing. The elder says: "Why do you quarrel with your husband so often?" The younger replies: "Oh, you know the making-up is extremely entertaining, and getting good again is so lovely!"

Evolution of the Piano, according to Darwin.(Berlin, 1872.)

A scene in a cheap book-store. A young lady says to the clerk: "I want a Lovers' Letter-writer—a cheap one." "Here, miss?" "How much is it?" "Eighteen kreutzers." "That is too dear for me." "Oh, but I beg your pardon, miss, if you take the Letter-writer, you get Schiller's works thrown in; and if a young lady buys at this shop a tract upon potatoes, she gets the whole of Goethe into the bargain."

The steps of a church are exhibited, with a clergyman assisting an old woman down to the sidewalk. A long explanation is given, as follows: "Parson Friedel, a thoroughly good fellow, though not a particularly good preacher, goes on Sunday morning to church to edify his flock. On his arrival he sees an old dame trying in vain to get up the icy steps. 'Oh, sir,' she says, not recognizing the holy man, 'pray help me up.' He does so, and when they have reached the top she thanks him, and adds, 'Oblige me also, dear sir, by telling me who preaches to-day?' 'Parson Friedel,' he courteously replies. 'Oh, sir, then help me down again.' The parson, smiling, rejoins: 'Quite right; I wouldn't go in myself if I were not obliged to.'"

A very tall man is bending over to light his cigar at an exceedingly short man's cigar. "What!" says the short man, "you wonder that your light goes out so often? That is owing to the rarity of the atmosphere in the elevated regions in which your cigar moves."

A stable scene, in which figure a horse, an officer, and a horse-dealer. The officer says: "The horse I bought of you yesterday has a fault; he is lame in the off fore-leg." The dealer replies: "Ah! and do you call that a fault? I call it a misfortune."

A clergyman's study. Enter a very ill-favored pair, to whom the clergymansays: "So you wish to be married, do you? Well, have you maturely reflected upon it?" The man replies: "Yes, we have asked beforehand about how much it will cost."

A Corporal, who is about to be promoted, presents Himself before the Major."Can you read?" "At your service, major." "Can you write?" "At your service, major." "Can you cipher?" "At your service, major." "What are you in civil life?" "Doctor of philosophy and lecturer in the university."—Fliegende Blätter, Berlin, 1872.

A Corporal, who is about to be promoted, presents Himself before the Major.

"Can you read?" "At your service, major." "Can you write?" "At your service, major." "Can you cipher?" "At your service, major." "What are you in civil life?" "Doctor of philosophy and lecturer in the university."—Fliegende Blätter, Berlin, 1872.

A compartment of a railway carriage, in which are two passengers, one of whom has two little pigs under the seat, and the other a small curly lap-dog in his lap.Conductor(standing outside). "Have you a dog's ticket?" "No." "Then get one." "But my dog troubles no one." "That makes no difference." "But this countryman here has two pigs in the carriage." "No matter for that; we have a rule about dogs, but none for pigs."

A boat on a Swiss lake with a party about to lunch. A lady, in great alarm, says to the boatman: "Stop, for Heaven's sake, stop! You told the people, when we got in, that your boat would sink if it were heavier by half an ounce. But if these men eat all that, we shall go to the bottom for a certainty."

A restaurant scene. A customer, handing back to a waiter a plate of meat, says: "Waiter, this meat is so tough I can't chew it."Waiter."Excuse me, I will bring you a sharp knife immediately."

An aged clergyman parting with a young soldier about to join the army, says: "Augustus, you now enter upon a military career. Take care of your health, and mind you lead a good life."Augustus."Same to you, pastor."

A boy up a tree, and a gentleman standing under it. "I'll teach you to steal my plums, you scoundrel! I'll tell your father." "What do I care? My father steals himself." This picture is headed, "Good Fruit."

A family seated at dinner.Mother."But, Elsie, naughty girl! what horrid manners you have! You eat only the cream, and leave the dumplings."Elsie."Why, papa can eat them."

A man and woman of Jewish cast of countenance are seen at a pawnbroker's sale.Woman."Well, what will you buy for mother's birthday?"Man."A handsome dress, I think."Woman."How unpractical you are! She can only live three or four years at most; and even in that short time a dress will be in rags. Let us buy for the dear old soul a pair of silver candlesticks. Then when she dies we shall have them back again."

Under the heading of "Cheap Illumination," we are presented with a pictureof an Esquimau with a lighted wick held in his mouth, and the following explanation: "The Esquimaux, as is well known, live on the fat of the reindeer, the seal, and the whale. This suggested to the arctic traveler, Warnie, the idea of drawing a wick through the body of one of the natives, and in this way obtaining a brilliant train-oil lamp for the long winter nights."

A Bold Comparison.(Berlin, 1873.)Pastor's Wife."But half the cracknels are scorched to-day."Cracknel Man."So they are. But, you see, I have the same luck as the pastor: all his sermons do not turn out equally good."

A Bold Comparison.(Berlin, 1873.)

Pastor's Wife."But half the cracknels are scorched to-day."

Cracknel Man."So they are. But, you see, I have the same luck as the pastor: all his sermons do not turn out equally good."

Two noble ladies chatting over their tea: "Only think, my dear, we are obliged to discharge our man." "Why?" "Oh, he begins to be too familiar. What do you think? I saw him cleaning the boots, and I discovered, to my horror, that he had my husband's boots, my son's, andhis own, all mixed together!"

A lady hurrying home from an approaching shower, dragging her little boy with her.Boy."But, mother, why should we be so afraid of the thunder storm? Those hay-makers yonder don't care."Mother."Child, they are poor people, who don't attract the lightning as we do, who always have gold and ready cash about us."

A scene in a police court, the magistrate questioning a witness: "You are a carpenter, are you not?" "I am." "You were at work in the vicinity of the place where the scuffle occurred?" "I was." "How far from the two combatants were you standing?" "Thirty-six feet and a half, Rhenish measure." "How can you speak so exactly?" "Because I measured it. I thought that most likely some fool would be asking about that at the trial."

These may suffice as examples of the average comic force of the German joke. A very few of the above—perhaps four or five in all—might have been accepted by the editors ofPunch, with the requisite changes of scene and dialect. We must also bear in mind that the dialect counts for much in a comic scene, as we can easily perceive by changing a Yorkshire bumpkin's language in a comedy into London English. Half of the laugh-compelling power of some of the specimens given may lie in peculiarities of dialect and grammar of which no one but a native of the country can feel the force. A few of the more vivid and telling examples are given in the accompanying illustrations.

The glimpses of German life which the comic artists afford remind us thatthe children of men are of one family, the several branches of which do not differ from one another so much as we are apt to suppose. German fathers, too, as we see in these pictures, stand amazed at the quantity of property their daughters can carry about with them in the form of wearing apparel. A domestic scene exhibits a young lady putting the last fond touches to her toilet, while a clerk presents a long bill to the father of the family, who throws his hands aloft, and exclaims, "Oh, blessed God! Thou who clothest the lilies of the field, provide also for my daughter, at least during the Carnival!"

Strict Discipline in the Field—Major going the Rounds at Night.Sentinel."Who goes there? Halt!" (Major, not regarding the summons, the soldier fires, and misses.)Major."Three days in the guard-house for your bad shooting."

Strict Discipline in the Field—Major going the Rounds at Night.

Sentinel."Who goes there? Halt!" (Major, not regarding the summons, the soldier fires, and misses.)

Major."Three days in the guard-house for your bad shooting."

Germany, not less than England and America, laughs at "the modern mother," who dawdles over Goethe, and is "literary," and wears eyeglasses, while delegating to bottles and goats her peculiar duties. An extravagant burlesque of this form of self-indulgence presents to view a baby lying on its back upon a centre-table, its head upon a pillow, taking nourishmentdirectfrom a goat standing over it; the mother sitting near in a luxurious chair, reading. Enter the family doctor, who cries, aghast, "Why, what's this, baroness? I did not mean itin that way! A she-goat is not a wet-nurse." To which the baroness languidly replies, looking from her book, "Why not?"

And here is the German version ofPunch'swidely disseminated joke upon marriage: "If you are going to be married, my son, I will give you some good advice." "And what is it?" "Better not."

The Woman's Rights agitation gave rise to burlesques precisely similar in inane extravagance to those which appeared in England, America, and France. We have the "Students of the Future," a series representing buxom lasses in dashing bloomers, smoking, dissecting, fighting duels, and hunting. The young lady who has on her dissecting-table a bearded "subject" is leaning against it nonchalantly, drinking a pot of beer, and another young lady is using the pointed heel of her fashionable boot as a tobacco-stopper. Here, too, is the husband who comes home late, and whose wifewillsit up for him.

The great servant-girl question is also up for discussion in Germany, after occupying womankind for three thousand years. Here is a group of servantstalking together. "Yesterday I gave warning," says one. "Why?" asks another; "the wages are high, the food is good, and you have every Sunday out." The reply is: "Well, you must know, my Fritz don't like it. Mistress buys her wine at the wine-merchant's, where I get the bottles all sealed. Don't you see?"

Ahead of Time.The aged and extremely absent-minded prince of a little territory visits the public institutions every year. On leaving the high school, he says to the teacher: "I am very much pleased with every thing, only the soup is a little too thin."Teacher(aside to aid-de-camp). "What does his Highness mean by thin soup?"Aid-de-camp."It is only a slip. His Highness should have said that in the hospital."

Ahead of Time.

The aged and extremely absent-minded prince of a little territory visits the public institutions every year. On leaving the high school, he says to the teacher: "I am very much pleased with every thing, only the soup is a little too thin."

Teacher(aside to aid-de-camp). "What does his Highness mean by thin soup?"

Aid-de-camp."It is only a slip. His Highness should have said that in the hospital."

In the same spirit, as every reader knows, the drawing-room judges the kitchen in other lands besides Germany, and is supported in its judgment by satiric artists who evolve preposterously impossible servants from the shallows of their own ignorance.

Rarely, indeed, does a German caricaturist presume to meddle with politics, and still more rarely does he do it with impunity. The Germans, with all their excellences, seem wanting in the spirit that has given us our turbulent, ill-organized freedom. Perhaps their beer has offered too ready and cheap a resource against the chafing resentments that tyranny excites; for a narcotized brain is indolently submissive to whatever is very difficult of remedy. Coffee and tobacco keep the Turk a slave. The wisest act of Louis Napoleon's usurpation was his giving a daily ration of tobacco to every soldier. Woe to despots when men cease to dull and pollute their brains with tobacco and alcohol! There will then be a speedy end put to the system that takes five millions of theéliteof Europe from industry, and consigns them to the business of suppressionand massacre. Whatever may be the cause, Germany has scarcely yet begun her apprenticeship to freedom; and, consequently, her public men lose the inestimable advantage of seeing their measures as the public sees them. Let us hope that the German people may be able to appropriate part of our experience, and so work their way to rational and orderly freedom without passing through the stage of ignorant suffrage and thief-politicians. Meanwhile there is no political caricature in Germany.

A Journeyman's Leave-taking."Hear me, all of you. You, and you, and you, and you! Good-bye, mistresses. I tell you freely to your faces, your bacon and greens are not to my taste. I am going to try my luck. I will march on."—Ludwig Richter,Leipsic, 1848.

A Journeyman's Leave-taking.

"Hear me, all of you. You, and you, and you, and you! Good-bye, mistresses. I tell you freely to your faces, your bacon and greens are not to my taste. I am going to try my luck. I will march on."—Ludwig Richter,Leipsic, 1848.

As a set-off to this defect, I may mention again the absence from the German comic periodicals of the class of subjects which, at present, seems to be the sole inspiration of French art and French humor. It is evident that the Germans do not regard illicit love as the chief end of man. The reason of the superior decency of German satire is, probably, that German methods of education awaken the intelligence and store the mind with the food of thought. Indecency is the natural resource of a thoughtless mind, because the physical facts of our existence constitute a very large proportion of all the knowledge it possesses. Suppose those facts and the ideas growing directly out of them to be one hundred in number. The whole number of facts and ideas in an ignorant mind may not exceed two hundred; while in the intellect of a Goethe or a Lessing there may live and revolve twenty thousand. Convent education is probably the cause of French indecency, simply from its leaving the mind dull and the imagination active. Many Frenchmen must thinkbodily, or not think at all. This conjecture I hazard because I have observed in Protestant schools, professedly and distinctively religious, the same morbid tendency in the pupils that we notice in French art and drama. The French are right in not trusting their convent-bred girls out of sight. The convent-bred boys, who can not be so closely watched, show the untrustworthiness of moral principle which is not fortified by intelligent conviction. The Germans, from their better mental culture and greater variety of topics, are not reduced to the necessity of amusing themselves by "bodily wit."

As it is "Don Quixote" that has given most of us whatever insight into Spanish life and character we possess, we should naturally expect to find in the Spain of to-day abundant manifestations of satirical talent. But since the great age when such men as Cervantes could be formed, the intellect of Spain has suffered exhausting depletion, and the nation has in consequence long lain intellectually impotent, the natural prey of priests, dynasties, and harlots. The progress of a country depends upon the use it makes of its best men. Since Cervantes was born, in 1547, all the valuable men among the Moors and Jews, with a million of their countrymen, have been banished, carrying away with them precious arts, processes, instincts, aptitudes, and talents; to say nothing of the good that comes to a country of having upon its soil a variety of races and religions, each developing some excellencies of human nature which the others overlook or undervalue. In the same generation hundreds of the valiant men of Spain went down in the Armada, and thousands were wasted in America.

But these were not the fatal losses. These men could have been replaced, such is the bountiful fertility of nature. But, in those days, if a man was reared who possessed independence or force of mind, or had much mind of any kind, he was likely to become a Protestant; and, if he did, one of two calamitous fates awaited him, either of which made him useless to Spain: he either concealed his opinions, and thus stifled his nobler life, or else the Inquisition destroyed him. Never was such successful war waged upon the human mind as in Spain at that period, for every man who manifested any kind of mental superiority was either slain or neutralized. If he escaped the goldmines, the wars, and the Inquisition, there was still the Church to take him in and convert him into a priest.

Nor need we go as far as Spain to see the fatal damage done to communities by the absorption of promising youth into the priesthood. We have only to go to the French parts of Canada, and mark the difference between the torpid and hopeless villages there, and the vigorous, handsome towns of New England, New York, and Michigan, just over the border. The reason of this amazing contrast is that on our side of the line the natural leaders of the people found mills, factories, libraries, and schools; on the other side they enterconvents and build churches; and the people, thus bereft of their natural chiefs, harness forlorn cows to crazy carts, and come down into Vermont and New Hampshire in harvest-time to get a little money to help them through the long Canadian winter. Thus, in Spain and Italy, the men who ought to serve the people, prey upon them, and the direct and chief reason why the northern nations of Europe surpass the southern is, that in the north the superior minds are turned to account, and in the south they have been entombed in the Church or paralyzed by titles of nobility.

After Sedan."Señor, we have brought to your Majesty this paroquet, which we found as we were going our rounds in camp."—FromGil Blas, Madrid, September, 1870.

After Sedan.

"Señor, we have brought to your Majesty this paroquet, which we found as we were going our rounds in camp."—FromGil Blas, Madrid, September, 1870.

Hence, in the country of Cervantes, in the native land of Gil Blas and Figaro, there is now little manifestation of their comic fertility and gayety of mind. A member of the American Legation obligingly writes from Madrid in 1875:

"I have questioned many persons here in regard to Spanish caricature, but have always received the same reply, namely, that pictorial caricature, political or other, has not existed in Spain till 1868. I have searched book-stores and book-stalls, and find nothing; nor have the venders been able to aid me. I found in a private library some Bibles and other religious books of the sixteenth century, in which were caricatures of the Pope and of similar subjects, but they were printed in Flanders, though in the Spanish language; and the art is Dutch. The pasquinades of Italy never prevailed in Spain. It isthought at our Legation here that there must have been caricature in Spain, from the writings of Spaniards being so full of satire and wit; but though the germ may have existed, I am inclined to think it was not developed till the dethronement of Isabel II. and the proclamation of the Republic broke down the barriers to the liberty, if not license, of the printing-press.

"Between 1868 and 1875 various papers were published here containing caricatures, copies of which are to be had, but at a premium. Until this period, I fancy the Inquisition, censorship, and other causes prevented any display of a spirit of caricature which may have existed. The real, untraveled Spanish mind has little idea of true wit: of satire and burlesque, yes; of inoffensive joke or pun, none. There is no Spanish word forpun; that for joke isbroma, taken from the Spanish name of theTeredo navalis, or wood-borer, so fatal to vessels, and really means an annoying, orpractical, joke. I have some samples of caricature, published during the period to which I refer, many of which, to one who is familiar with the politics, manners, and customs in Spain at the time, are equal in point, if not in execution, to any thing inPunch. They were, for the greater part, designed by Ortego, but are of the English or French style, and have little Spanish individuality."

To the Bull-fight."There they go, all resolved to yellBungler!at the picador, whether he does his part well or ill. It's all they know how to do."—FromEl Mundo Cómico, Madrid, 1873.

To the Bull-fight.

"There they go, all resolved to yellBungler!at the picador, whether he does his part well or ill. It's all they know how to do."—FromEl Mundo Cómico, Madrid, 1873.

A great mass of the comic illustrated series and periodicals alluded to by my attentive correspondent accompanied his letter, and justify its statements. The "French style" is indeed most apparent in them, as the reader shall see. The "Comic Almanac" for 1875 ("Almanaque Cómico" para 1875), publishedat Madrid, and profusely illustrated, is entirely in the French style. Many of the pictures have every thing of Gavarni except his genius. Here are some that catch the eye in running over its shabby, ill-printed pages:

Picture of an ill-favored father contemplating a worse-favored boy, aged about six years. Father speaks: "It is very astonishing! The more this son of mine grows, the more he looks like my friend Ramon."

A Delegation of Birds of Prey, presenting Thanks to the Authors of the Bountiful Carnage provided for the Late Festival.(FromGil Blas, Madrid, September, 1870.)

Picture of a gentleman in evening dress, flirting familiarly with a dancing-girl behind the scenes of a theatre. She says: "If only your intentions were good!" To which he replies by asking: "And what do you call good intentions?" She casts down her eyes and stammers: "To promise—to keep your word."

Picture of a young lady at the desk of a public writer, to whom she says: "Make the sweetest little verse to tell him that I hope to see him next Sunday at the gate of the Alcalá, near the first swing."

Picture of a husband and wife, both in exuberant health.She."You grow worse and worse; and sea-bathing issogood for you!"He."And you?"She."I am well; but I shall go with you to take care of you, dear."

Picture of a very fashionably dressed lady and little girl, to whom enters, hat and cane in hand, a gentleman, who says to the child: "Do you not rememberme, little Ruby?" She replies: "Ah, yes! You are thefirstpapa that used to come to our house a good while ago, and you always brought me caramels."

Picture of two young ladies in conversation. One of them says: "When he looks at me, I lower my eyes. When he presses my hand, I blush. And if he kisses me, I call to mamma, and the poor fellow believes it, and dares go no further."

Picture of a woman in a bath-tub, to whom enters a man presenting a bill. She says: "Take a seat, for I am about to rise from the bath, and then we can settle that account."

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