CHAPTER XIFROM CRUIKSHANK TO LEECH

Traviès's "Mayeux.""Adam destroyed us by the apple; Lafayette by the pear."

Traviès's "Mayeux."

"Adam destroyed us by the apple; Lafayette by the pear."

In a hundred different guises, in the blue blouse of theworkman, the apron of the butcher, the magisterial gown of judge or advocate, this hunchback Mayeux, this misshapen parody upon humanity, endeared himself to the Parisian public. Virulent, salacious, corrupt, he was a sort of French Mr. Hyde—the shadow of secret weaknesses and vices, lurking behind the Dr. Jekyll of smugbourgeoisrespectability; and the French public recognized him as a true picture of their baser selves. They laughed indulgently over the broad, Rabelaisian jests that unfailingly accompanied each newcartoon—jests which M. Dayot has admirably characterized as "seasoned with coarse salt, more German than Gallic, and forming a series of legends which might be made into a veritable catechism of pornography." This Mayeux series is not, strictly speaking, political in its essence. It touches upon all sides of life, without discrimination and without respect. It even trespasses upon the subject of that forbidden fruit, "Le Poire." In an oft-cited cartoon, Mayeux with extended arms, his head sunken lower than usual between his huddled shoulders, is declaiming: "Adam destroyed us with the apple; Lafayette has destroyed us with the pear!" And later, when repeated arrests, verdicts, fines, edicts had banished politics from the arena of caricature, Mayeux was still a privileged character. Like Chicot, the jester, who could speak his mind fearlessly to his "Henriquet," while the ordinary courtier cringed obsequiously, Mayeux shared the proverbial privilege of children and buffoons, to speak the truth. And oftentimes it was not even necessary for his creator, Traviès, to manifest any overt political significance; the public were always more than ready to look for it below the surface. In such a picture as that of Mayeux, in Napoleonic garb striking an attitude before a portrait of the Little Corporal and exclaiming, "Comme je lui ressemble!" they inevitably discovered a hint that there were other hypocrites more august than Mayeux who fancied themselves worthy of filling Napoleon's shoes.

Messieurs Macaire and Bertrand have found it expedient to make a hurried departure for Belgium for the purpose of evading French justice. The eloquent Macaire, on reaching the frontier, declaims as follows: "Hail to thee, O land of hospitality! Hail, fatherland of those who haven't got any! Sacred refuge of all unfortunates proscribed by human justice, hail! To all drooping hearts Belgium is dear."

Even more famous than Mayeux are the Macaire and Bertrand series, the joint invention of Philipon, who supplied the ideas and the text, and of Daumier, who executed the designs. According to Thackeray, whose analysis of these masterpieces of French caricature has become classic, they had their origin in an old play, the "Auberge des Adrets," in whichtwo thieves escaped from the galleys were introduced, Robert Macaire, the clever rogue, and Bertrand, his friend, the "butt and scapegoat on all occasions of danger." The play had been half-forgotten when it was revived by a popular and clever actor, Frederick Lemaïtre, who used it as a vehicle for political burlesque. The play was suppressed, butLe Charivarieagerly seized upon the idea and continued it from day to day in the form of a pictorial puppet show, of which the public never seemed to weary. Thackeray's summary of the characters of these two illustrious rascals can scarcely be improved upon:

Extinguished!

"M. Robert Macaire [he says] is a compound of Fielding's 'Blueskin' and Goldsmith's 'Beau Tibbs.' He has the dirt and dandyism of the one, with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle, but where he can get ashilling more, M. Macaire will murder without scruple; he performs one and the other act (or any in the scale between them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and accompanies his actions with such philosophical remarks as may be expected from a person of his talents, his energies, his amiable life and character. Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes vicarious atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which pantaloon performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the fatal influence of clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that gentleman, but he has not his genius and courage.... Thus Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to go through the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished than the other. Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his friend, and, in the event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the lurch. There is, in the two characters, some grotesque good for the spectator—a kind of 'Beggars' Opera' moral.... And with these two types of clever and stupid knavery, M. Philipon and his companion Daumier havecreated a world of pleasant satire upon all the prevailing abuses of the day."

Louis Philippe as Cain with the Angels of Justice in Pursuit.

The Macaire and Bertrand series were less directly political in their scope than that of Traviès's hunchback; at least, their political allusions were more carefully veiled. Yet the first of the series had portrayed in Macaire's picturesque green coat and patched red trousers no less a personage than the old "Poire" himself, and the public remembered it. When politics were banished from journalism they persisted in finding in each new escapade of Macaire and Bertrand an allusion to some fresh scandal, if not connected with the King himself, at least well up in the ranks of governmental hypocrites. And, although the specific scandals upon which they are based, the joint-stock schemes for floating worthless enterprises, the thousand-and-one plausible humbugs of the period, are now forgotten, to those who take the trouble to read between the lines, these masterpieces of Daumier's genius form a luminous exposition of themoraleof the government and the court circles.

Laughing John—Crying John.July, 1830. February, 1848.

In contrast with the brilliancy of the French artists, the work in England during these years, at least prior to the establishment ofPunch, is distinctly disappointing. The one man who might have raised caricature to an even higher level than that of Gillray and Rowlandson was George Cruikshank, but he withdrew early in life from political caricature, preferring, like Hogarth, to concentrate his talent upon the dramatic aspects of contemporary social life. Yet at the outset of his career, just as he was coming of age, Cruikshank produced one cartoon that has remained famous because it anticipated by thirty years the attitude of Mill and Cobden in 1846. It was in 1815, just after the battle of Waterloo had secured an era of peace for Europe, that he produced his protest against the laws restricting the importation of grain into England. He called it "The Blessings of Peace; or, the Curse of the Corn Bill." A cargo of foreign grain has just arrived and is being offered for sale by the supercargo: "Here is the best for fifty shillings." On the shore a group of British landholders wave the foreigner away: "We won't have it at any price. We are determined to keep up our own to eighty shillings, and if the poor can't buy it at that price, why, they must starve." In the background a storehouse with tight-shut doors bulges with home-grown grain. A starving family stand watching while the foreign grain is thrown overboard, and the father says: "No, no, masters, I'll not starve, but quit my nativeland, where the poor are crushed by those they labor to support, and retire to one more hospitable, and where the arts of the rich do not interpose to defeat the providence of God."

After Cruikshank, until the advent of the men who madePunchfamous,—Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, and their successors,—there are no cartoonists in England whose work rises above mediocrity. When the death of Canning brought Wellington and Peel into power, a series of colored prints bearing the signature H. Heath, and persistently lampooning the new ministry, enjoyed a certain vogue. They scarcely rose above the level of the penny comic valentine, which they much resembled in crudeness of color and poverty of invention. One set, entitled "Our Theatrical Celebrities," depicted the Premier as stage manager, the other members of the cabinet as leading man, première danseuse, prompter, etc. Another series depicts the same statesmen as so many thoroughbreds, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and describes the good points of each in the most approved language of the turf. Lot No. 1 is the Duke of Wellington, described as "the famous charger, Arthur"; Lot No. 2 is Peel, the "Good Old Cobb, Bobby," and the rest of the series continue the same vein of inane witticism. Somewhat more point is to be found in the portrayal of Wellington buried up to his neck in his own boot—one of the universal Wellington boots of the period. The cartoonist's thought, quite obviously, was that the illustrious hero of Waterloo had won his fame primarily in boots and spurs, and that as a statesman he became a very much shrunken and insignificant figure. In its underlying thought this cartoon suggests comparison with the familiar "Grandpa's Hat" cartoons of the recent Harrison administration. Very rarely Heath broke away from home politics and touched upon internationalquestions of the day. A print showing the Premier engaged in the task of "making a rushlight," which he is just withdrawing cautiously from a large tub labeled "Greece," is an allusion to the part played by Great Britain in helping to add the modest light of Greek independence to the general illumination of civilized Europe.

The Duke of Wellington in Caricature.From the collection of the New York Public Library.

The Duke of Wellington in Caricature.

From the collection of the New York Public Library.

Another man whose work enjoyed a long period of shop-window popularity, and who nevertheless did not always rise above the comic-valentine level, was John Doyle, who owes his memory less to his own work than to the fact that he was the father of a real master of the art, Richard Doyle. Parton, in his history of "Caricature and Other Comic Art,"notes the elder Doyle's remarkable prolificness, estimating his collected prints at upward of nine hundred; and he continues: "It was a custom with English print-sellers to keep portfolios of his innocent and amusing pictures to let out by the evening to families about to engage in the arduous work of entertaining their friends at dinner. He excelled greatly in his portraits, many of which, it is said by contemporaries, are the best ever taken of the noted men of that day, and may safely be accepted as historical. Brougham, Peel, O'Connell, Hume, Russell, Palmerston, and others appear in his works as they were in their prime, with little distortion or exaggeration, the humor of the pictures being in the situation portrayed. Thus, after a debate in which allusion was made to an ancient egg anecdote, Doyle produced a caricature in which the leaders of parties were drawn as hens sitting upon eggs. The whole interest of the picture lies in the speaking likeness of the men."

What the advent ofLa Caricaturedid for French comic art was done for England by the birth ofPunch, the "London Charivari," on July 17, 1841. It is not surprising that this veteran organ of wit and satire, essentially British though it is in the quality and range of its humor, should have inspired a number of different writers successively to record its annals. Mr. M. H. Spielmann, whose admirable volume is likely to remain the authoritative history, points out that the very term "cartoon" in its modern sense is in reality a creation ofPunch's. In the reign of Charles I., he says, the approved phrase was, "a mad designe"; in the time of George II. it was known as a "hieroglyphic"; throughout the golden age of Gillray and Cruikshank "caricature" was the epithet applied to the separate copperplate broadsides displayed in the famous shops of Ackermann, Mrs. Humphrey, and McClean. But it was not until July, 1843, when the first great exhibition of cartoons for the Houses of Parliament was held—gigantic designs handling the loftiest subjects in the most elevated artistic spirit—thatPunchinaugurated his own sarcastic series of "cartoons," and by doing so permanently enriched the language with a new word, or rather with new meaning for an old word.Punch, however, did far more than merely to change the terminology of caricature, he revolutionized its spirit; he made it possible for Gladstone to say of it that "in his early days, when an artist was engaged to produce politicalsatires, he nearly always descended to gross personal caricature, and sometimes to indecency. To-day the humorous press showed a total absence of vulgarity and a fairer treatment, which made this department of warfare always pleasing."

As in the case of other famous characters of history, the origin and parentage ofPunchhave been much disputed, and a variety of legends have grown up about the source of its very name, the credit for its genesis being variously assigned to its original editors, Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, the printer Joseph Last, the writer Douglas Jerrold, and a number of obscurer literary lights. One story cited by Mr. Spielmann, although clearly apocryphal, is nevertheless worthy of repetition. According to this story, somebody at one of the preliminary meetings spoke of the forthcoming paper as being like a good mixture of punch, good for nothing without Lemon, when Mayhew caught up the idea and cried, "A capital idea! We'll call itPunch!"

In marked contrast to its French prototype, the "London Charivari" was from the beginning a moderate organ, and a stanch supporter of the Crown. In its original prospectus its political creed was outlined as follows: "Punchhas no party prejudices; he is conservative in his opposition to Fantoccini and political puppets, but a progressive whig in his love ofsmall changeand a repeal of the union with public Judies." And to this day this policy of "hitting all around," of avoiding any bitter and prolonged partisanship, is the keynote ofPunch'spopularity and prestige. How this attitude has been consistently maintained in its practical working is well brought out by Mr. Spielmann in his chapter dedicated to the periodicPunchdinners, where the editorial councils have always taken place:

The Land of Liberty.

"When the meal is done and cigars and pipes are duly lighted, subjects are deliberately proposed in half a dozen quarters, until quite a number may be before the Staff. They are fought all round the Table, and unless obviously and strikingly good, are probably rejected or attacked with good-humored ridicule or withering scorn.... And when the subject of a cartoon is a political one, the debate grows hot and the fun more furious, and it usually ends by Tories andRadicals accepting a compromise, for the parties are pretty evenly balanced at the Table; while Mr. Burnand assails both sides with perfect indifference. At last, when the intellectual tug-of-war, lasting usually from half-past eight for just an hour and three-quarters by the clock, is brought to a conclusion, the cartoon in all its details is discussed and determined; and then comes the fight over the title and the 'cackle,' amid all the good-natured chaff and banter of a pack of boisterous, high-spirited schoolboys."

"What? You young Yankee-Noodle, strike your own Father!"

Louis Philippe as "The Napoleon of Peace."From the collection of the New York Public Library.

Louis Philippe as "The Napoleon of Peace."

From the collection of the New York Public Library.

Down to the close of the period covered in the present chapter, the cartoon played a relatively small part in the weekly contents ofPunch, averaging barely one a week, and being omitted altogether from many numbers. During these years the dominating spirit was unquestionably John Leech, who produced no less than two hundred and twenty-three cartoons out of a total of three hundred and fourteen, or morethan twice as many as all the other contributors put together. He first appeared with a pageful of "Foreign Affairs" in the fourth issue ofPunch—a picture of some huddled groups of foreign refugees—a design remembered chiefly because it for the first time introduced to the world the artist's sign-manual, a leech wriggling in a water bottle.

Of Doyle's political plates during these early years, none is more interesting to the American reader than the few rare occasions upon which he seeks to express the British impression of the United States. One of these, "The Land of Liberty," appeared in 1847. A lean and lanky, but beardless, Uncle Sam tilts lazily back in his rocking-chair, a six-shooter in his hand, a huge cigar between his teeth. One foot rests carelessly upon a bust of Washington, which he has kicked over. The other is flung over the back of another chair in sprawling insolence. In the ascending clouds of smoke appear the Stars and Stripes, surrounded by a panorama of outrages, duels, barroom broils, lynch law, etc., and above them all, the contending armies of the Mexican war, over whom a gigantic devil hovers, his hands extended in a malignant benediction. A closely analogous cartoon of this same year by Richard Doyle sharply satirized Louis Philippe as the "Napoleon of Peace," and depicted in detail the unsatisfactory condition of European affairs as seen from the British vantage ground. As a consequence of this cartoonPunchwas for some time excluded from Paris.

The Great Sea Serpent of 1848.From the collection of the New York Public Library.

The Great Sea Serpent of 1848.

From the collection of the New York Public Library.

From 1848 onward the cartoons inPunchlook upon the world politics from a constantly widening angle. Indeed, the same remark holds good for the comic organs not only of England, but of France, Germany, Italy, and the other leading nations as well. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the international relations of the leadingpowers may be followed almost without a break in the cartoons ofPunchandJudy, of theFliegende Blätterand theKladderadatsch, ofDon Pirlone, of theJournal pour Rire, ofLifeandPuckandJudge, and the countless host of their followers and imitators.

A Bird's Eye View of Europe in 1830.From the collection of the New York Public Library.

A Bird's Eye View of Europe in 1830.

From the collection of the New York Public Library.

Daumier.Daumier fut le peintre ordinaireDes pairs, des députés et des Robert-Macaire.Son rude crayon fait l'histoire de nos jours.—Ô l'étonnante boule! ô la bonne figure!—Je le crois pardieu bien, car Daumier est toujours Excellent en caricature.

Daumier.

Daumier fut le peintre ordinaireDes pairs, des députés et des Robert-Macaire.Son rude crayon fait l'histoire de nos jours.—Ô l'étonnante boule! ô la bonne figure!—Je le crois pardieu bien, car Daumier est toujours Excellent en caricature.

The close of the first half of the nineteenth century marks a convenient moment for a backward glance. These fifty years, which began with the consulship of the first Napoleon and closed on the eve of the third Napoleon'scoup d'état, witnessed the rise and fall of more than one Napoleonic spirit in the realm of comic art. It was essentially a period of individualism, of the one-man power in caricature. Existing conditions forbade a logical and unbroken development of the political cartoon; it evolved only by fits and starts. It was often less an expression of the popular mood than a vehicle for personal enthusiasm or personal rancor; at the hands of just a few masters, it verged upon the despotic. At intervals, first in one country and then in another, a Gillray, a Rowlandson, a Daumier, would blaze forth, brilliant, erratic, meteor-like, leaving behind them a trail of scintillating suggestion, destined to fire some new fuse, to start caricature along some new curve of eccentricity. The importance of these fifty years, the lasting influence of these forerunners of the modern cartoonists, must not be underrated. Without the inspiration of their brilliant successes, and, it may also be added, the useful lessons of their errors and failures, the cartoon of to-day would be radically different, and probably greatly inferior to what it is. Above all, they taught, by two tremendous object lessons, the potent force that lies in pictorial satire—by the share which English cartoonists had in the overthrow of Napoleon I., and whichFrench cartoonists had in the downfall of Louis Philippe. But it was only with the advent of the modern comic weekly of the high type represented byPunchthat it became possible to develop schools of caricature with definite aims and established traditions—schools that have tended steadily to eliminate and reject the old-time elements of vulgarity and exaggeration, to gain the increased influence that comes from sobriety of method and higher artistic excellence, and to hold erratic individuality in check. Few people who are notdirectly concerned in its making ever realize how essentially the modern caricature is a composite production. Take, for example, the big, double-page cartoon which has become such a familiar weekly feature inPuckorJudge, with its complicated group of figures, its suggestive background, its multitude of clever minor points; the germ idea has been picked out from perhaps a dozen others, as the result of careful deliberation, and from this starting point the whole design has been built up, detail by detail, representing the joint cleverness of the entire editorial staff. But the collaboration reaches further back than this. A political cartoon resembles in a way a composite photograph, which embodies not merely the superimposed features of the men who sat before the camera, but something also of the countless generations before them, who have made their features what they are by transmitting from father to son something of their own personality. In the same way, the political cartoon of to-day is the product of a gradual evolution, mirroring back the familiar features of many a cartoon of the past. It is not merely an embodiment of the ideas of the satirists who suggested it and the artist who drew it, but also of many a traditional and stereotyped symbol, bequeathed from generation to generation by artists dead and gone. The very essence of pictorial satire, its alpha and omega, so to speak, is symbolism, the use of certain established types, conventional personifications of Peace and War, Death and Famine and Disease, Father Time with his scythe, the Old Year and the New; the Russian Bear, the British Lion, and the American Eagle; Uncle Sam and Columbia, Britannia and John Bull. These figures, as we have them to-day, cannot point to any one creator. They are not an inspiration of the moment, a stroke of genius, like Daumier's "Macaire" or Traviès's"Mayeux." They are the product of a century of evolution, a gradual survival of the fittest, resulting from the unconscious natural selection of popular approval. No better specific instance can be taken than that of the familiar figure of John Bull as he appears from week to week in the contemporary pages ofPunch, for his descent may be traced in an unbroken line—there are no missing links. No single British caricaturist, from Gillray to Du Maurier, can claim the credit for having invented him; yet each in his turn has contributed something, a touch here, a line there, toward making him what he is to-day. As Mr. Spielmann has pointed out, the earliest prototype ofPunch'sJohn Bull is to be sought in Gillray's conception of "Farmer George," that figured in a long series of malevolent caricatures depicting George III., as a gaping country lout, a heavy, dull-witted yokel. There is no more curious paradox in the history of caricature than that this figure of "Farmer George," conceived in pure malice as a means of inspiring resentment against a king popularly believed to care more for his farmyard than for the interests of his subjects, should by gradual transition have come to be accepted as the symbolic figure of the nation. Yet the successive steps are easy enough to understand. When Gillray's point of attack had shifted from the throne of England to the throne of France, his type of "Farmer George" needed but slight modification to become a huge, ungainly ogre, the incarnation of British wrath against "Little Boney"—shaking a formidable fist at the coast of Calais, wading knee-deep across the channel, or greedily opening a cavernous jaw to take in a soul-satisfying meal of French frigates. But beneath the exaggerated ferocity of Gillray's extreme type, the idea of a farmer as the national figure is never quite lost sight of. In Gillray's latercartoons the conception of John Bull had already taken on a more consistent and definite form. At the hands of Rowlandson and Woodward he lost much of his uncouthness and began to assume a mellower and more benignant aspect; a cartoon by the latter, entitled "Genial Rays," pictures him reclining luxuriously upon a bed of roses, basking in "the sun of patriotism," the image of agricultural contentment. A certain coarseness and vulgarity, however, clung to him until well down into the forties, when the refining touch of Leech and Tenniel gradually idealized him into the portly, choleric, well-to-do rural gentleman who is to-day such a familiar figure the world over. This type of John Bull as therepresentative Briton once called forth some thoroughly characteristic comments from John Ruskin. "Is it not surely," he asks, "some overruling power in the nature of things, quite other than the desire of his readers, which compels Mr. Punch, when the squire, the colonel, and the admiral are to be at once expressed, together with all that they legislate or fight for, in the symbolic figure of the nation, to present the incarnate Mr. Bull always as a farmer—never as a manufacturer or shopkeeper?" Such a view on the part of Mr. Ruskin is consistent with his life-long insistence upon literal truth in art. But he was obviously mistaken when he questioned that John Bull is the deliberate choice of the British public. The average Englishman, whether soldier or sailor, statesman, merchant, or manufacturer, approves and enjoys the pleasant fiction that the representative type is a good, old-fashioned country gentleman, conservative and rather insular, a supporter of landed interests, a patron of country sports; in short, one who lives his life close to his native soil, who seems to personify the rolling down, the close-clipped hedge, the trim gardenplot, the neat thatched roof, things which typify England the world over.

The Evolution of John Bull.

Henri Monnier in the Rôle of Joseph Prudhomme."Never shall my daughter become the wife of a scribbler."By Daumier

Henri Monnier in the Rôle of Joseph Prudhomme.

"Never shall my daughter become the wife of a scribbler."

By Daumier

Not only are most of the accepted symbolic figures—John Bull, Uncle Sam, and the rest—what they are because they meet with popular approval, but no cartoonist to-day could venture upon any radical departure from the established type—a bearded John Bull, a smooth-shaven Uncle Sam—without calling down public disfavor upon his head. If one stops to think of it, our own accepted national type, the tall, lank, awkward figure, the thin, angular Yankee face with a shrewd and kindly twinkle in the eye, is even less representative of the average American than John Bull is of the average Briton. It is interesting to recall that before the Civil Warour national type frequently took the form of a Southerner—regularly in the pages ofPunch. To-day, in England and in America, there is but one type of Uncle Sam, and we would not tolerate a change. It may be that in the gaunt, loose-knit frame, the strong and rugged features we recognize a kinship to that sterling and essentially American type of man which found its best exponent in Lincoln, and that this is the reason why Uncle Sam has become the most universally accepted and the best beloved of all our conventional types.

It was only natural that caricature, like every other form of free expression of opinion, should feel the consequences of the general political upheaval of 1848; and these consequences differed widely in the different countries of Europe, according to the degree of civic liberty which that revolutionary movement had effected. In Germany, for example, it resulted in the establishment of a whole group of comic weeklies, with a license for touching upon political topics quite unprecedented in that land of imperialism and censorship. In France, on the contrary, political caricature came to an abrupt close just at a time when it had begun to give promise of exceptional interest. Louis Napoleon, who owed his elevation to the presidency of the republic chiefly to the popular belief in his absolute harmlessness, developed a most unexpected and disconcerting strength of character. His capacity for cunning and unscrupulousness was yet to be learned; but a feeling of distrust was already in the air, and the caricaturists were quick to reflect it. Louis Napoleon, however, was keenly alive to the deadly harm wrought to his predecessor by Philipon's pictorial sharp-shooters, and he did not propose to let history repeat itself by holding him up to public ridicule, after the fashion of the poor old "Poire," the citizen king. Accordingly thecoup d'étatwas hardly an accomplished fact when press laws were passed of such a stringent nature that the public press, and pictorial satire along with it, was reduced to a state of vassalage, dependentupon the imperial caprice, a condition that lasted upward of fifteen years. Consequently, the few cartoons satirizing Napoleon III., that emanate from French sources, either belong to the closing years of his reign or else antedate the law of 1851, which denied trial by jury to all cases of infringement of the press laws. The latter cartoons, however, are of special interest, for they serve to throw important light upon the popular state of mind just prior to the famouscoup d'état.

"The only Lamps authorized to light the Path of the Government."By Vernier in "Charivari."

"The only Lamps authorized to light the Path of the Government."

By Vernier in "Charivari."

An Italian Cartoon of '48.

The majority of these cartoons appeared in the pages ofCharivari, and some of the best are due to the caustic pencil of Charles Vernier. A good specimen of this artist's work is a lithograph entitled "The Only Lamps Authorized for the Present to Light up the Path of the Government," showing Louis Napoleon marching along sedately, his hands clasped behind his back and his way illuminated by threelantern-bearers. The lanterns are, respectively,La Patrie du Soir,Le Moniteur du SoirandLa Gazette de France, newspapers then in favor with the government. Just in front of Louis Napoleon, however, may be seen a dark and ominous manhole. Another of Vernier's cartoons is called "The Shooting Match in the Champs Élysées." The target is the head of the Constitution surmounting a pole. Napoleon is directing the efforts of the contestants. "The man who knocks the target over completely," he is saying, "I will make my Prime Minister." The contrast between the great Napoleon and the man whom Victor Hugo liked so to call "Napoleon the Little" suggested another pictorial effort of Vernier. A veteran of the Grand Army is watching the coach of the state passing by, Napoleon holding the reins. "What! That my Emperor!" exclaims the veteran, shading his eyes. "Those rascally Englishmen, how they have changed my vision!" The methods by which Louis Napoleon obtained his election first as President for ten years, and secondly as Emperor of the French, were satirized inCharivariby Daumier in a cartoon called "Les Aveugles" (The Blind). In the center of this cartoon is a huge ballot jarmarked "Universal Suffrage." Around this the sightless voters are laboriously groping.

Napoleon Le Petit.By Vernier.

Napoleon Le Petit.

By Vernier.

Many were the designs by which Daumier inCharivarisatirized Louis Napoleon's flirtation with the French republic. In one of them the Prince, bearing a remote resemblance in manner and in dress to Robert Macaire, is offering the lady his arm. "Belle dame," he is saying, "will you accept my escort?" To which she replies coldly: "Monsieur, your passion is entirely too sudden. I can place no great faith in it."

The New Siamese Twins.

Louis Napoleon and Madame France.

Pictorial expressions of opinion regarding the "great crime" of 1851, which once more replaced a republic with an empire, must be sought for outside of France. But there was one subject at this time upon which even the strictest of edicts could not enforce silence, and that was the subject of Napoleon's marriage to Eugénie. The Emperor's Spanishbride was never popular, not even during the first years of the Second Empire, before she began to meddle with affairs of state; and in many incisive ways the Parisians heaped ridicule upon her. A curious little pamphlet, with text and illustrations, about the new Empress was sold in Paris at the time of the marriage. This pamphlet was entirely complimentary and harmless. The biting humor of it was on the title-page, which the vendors went about crying in the streets: "The portrait and virtues of the Empress, all for two sous!" But for a frank expression of what the world thought of the new master of the destinies of France, it is necessary to turn to the contemporary pages ofPunch. The "London Charivari" was at this time just entering upon its most glorious epoch of political caricature. John Leech, one of the two great English cartoonists of the past half century, had arrived at the maturity of his talent; the second, John Tenniel, was destined soon to join the staff ofPunchin place of Richard Doyle, who resigned in protest against the editorial policy of attacking the Roman Catholic Church. Both of these artists possessed a technical skill and a degree of artistic inspiration that raised them far above the level of the mere caricaturist.And as it happened, the world was entering upon a long succession of stormy scenes, destined to furnish them with matter worthy of their pencils. After forty years of peace, Europe was about to incur an epidemic of war. The clash between Turkey and Russia in 1853 was destined to assume international proportions in the Crimean War; England's troubles were to be augmented by the revolt of her Indian mercenaries; the Russian war was to be closely followed by another between France and Austria; by the enfranchisement of Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic; the bitter struggle between Prussia and Austria; and the breaking up of the Confederation of the Rhine, with the Franco-Prussian War looming up in the near future. It was on the threshold of such troublous times, and as if prophetic of the end of European tranquillity, that Leech signalized the accession of Napoleon III. as Emperor with the significant cartoon,"France is Tranquil!!!" Poor France cannot well be otherwise than tranquil, for Mr. Leech depicts her bound hand and foot, a chain-shot fastened to her feet and a sentry standing guard over her with a bayonet. The artist soon followed this up with another cartoon, evidently suggested by the initial plate of Hogarth's famous series of "The Rake's Progress." The Prince President, in the character of the Rake, has just come into his inheritance, and has cast aside his former mistress, Liberté, to whom he is offering money, her mother (France) standing by, an indignant witness to the scene. His military tailor is measuring him for a new imperial uniform, while behind him a priest (in allusion to thefinancial aid which the Papal party was receiving from Napoleon) is helping himself from a plate of money standing beside the President. On the floor is a confused litter of swords, knapsacks, bayonets, crowns, crosses of the Legion of Honor, the Code Napoléon, and other miscellaneous reminders of Louis' well-known craze on the subject of his uncle and his uncle's ideas. Mr. Tenniel's early cartoons of Louis Napoleon are scarcely more kindly. The Emperor's approaching marriage is hit off in one entitled "The Eagle in Love," in which Eugénie, represented with the most unflattering likeness, is employed in paring the imperial eagle's talons. In 1853 Tenniel depicts an "International Poultry Show," where we see among the entries a variety of eagles—thePrussian eagle, the American eagle, the two-headed Russian and Austrian eagles—and among them a wretched mongrel, more closely akin to a bedraggled barn-door fowl than to the "French Eagle" which it claims to be. Queen Victoria, who is visiting the show, under escort of Mr. Punch, remarks: "We have nothing of that sort, Mr. Punch; but should there be alionshow, we can send a specimen!!"

Louis Napoleon's Proclamation.

Split Crow in the Crimea.From Punch.

Split Crow in the Crimea.

From Punch.

Bursting of the Russian Bubble.

"General Février" turned Traitor.

The grim struggle of the Crimean War for a time checked Mr. Punch's attacks upon Napoleon III., and turned his attention in another direction. Although the war cloud in the East was assuming portentous dimensions, there were many in England, the Peace Society, the members of the peace-at-any-price party, with Messrs. Bright and Cobden at their head, and most conspicuous of all the Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen, who deliberately blinded themselves to the possibility of war. It was for the enlightenment of these gentlemen that Mr. Leech designed his cartoon "No Danger," representing a donkey, eloquent in his stolid stupidity, tranquilly braying in front of a loaded cannon. In still another cartoon Lord Aberdeen himself is placidly smoking "The Pipe of Peace" over a brimming barrel of gunpowder. John Bull, however, has already become wide-awake to the danger, for he is nailing the Russian eagle to his barn door, remarking to his French neighbor thathewon't worry the Turkies any more. At this time England had begun to watch with growing jealousy the cordialententebetween Russia and Austria, for the Emperor Nicholas was strongly suspected of having offered to Austria a slice of his prospective prize, Turkey. This rumor forms the basis of an effective cartoon by Leech, "The Old 'Un and the Young 'Un," in which the Russian and Austrian Emperors are seated at table, genially dividing a bottle of port between them. "Now then, Austria," says Nicholas, "just help me finishthe Port(e)." Meanwhile, hostilities between Turkey and Russia had begun, and the latter had already received a serious setback at Oltenitza, an event commemorated by Tenniel in his cartoon of "A Bear with a Sore Head." In spite of his blind optimism, Lord Aberdeen was by this time finding it decidedly difficult to handle the reins of foreign affairs. One of the best satires of the year is by Tenniel, entitled "The Unpopular Act of the Courier of St. Petersburg," depicting Aberdeen performing the dangerous feat of driving a team of vicious horses. The mettlesome leaders, Russia and Turkey, have already taken the bit between their teeth, while Austria, catching the contagion of their viciousness, is plunging dangerously. This cartoon was soon followed by another still more notable, entitled "What It Has Come To," one of those splendid animal pictures in which John Tenniel especially excelled. It shows us the Russian bear, scampering off in the distance, while in the foreground Lord Aberdeen is clinging desperately to the British lion, which has started in mad pursuit, with his mane erect and his tail stiffened like a ramrod; the lion plunges along, dragging behind him the terrified premier, who is gasping out that he can no longer hold him and is forced to "let him go." At the same time Mr. Leech also represented pictorially Lord Aberdeen awakening to the necessity of war in his "Bombardment of Odessa." The cartoon is in two parts, representing respectively the English Premier and the Russian Emperor reading their morning paper. "Bombardment of Odessa," says Aberdeen. "Dear me, this will be very disagreeable to my imperial friend." "Bombardment of Odessa," says Nicholas; "confound it! This will be very annoying to dear old Aberdeen!" In the following November the British victory of Inkerman, won against almosthopeless odds, was witnessed by two members of the Russian imperial family. Leech promptly commemorated this fact in his picture of "The Russian Bear's Licked Cubs, Nicholas and Michael." The cartoon entitled the "Bursting of the Russian Bubble" appeared inPunch, October 14, 1854, just after the battle of the Alma had taken place and part of the Russian fleet had been destroyed by the English and French ships at Sebastopol. This cartoon is by the hand of Leech. The Russian Emperor, Nicholas I., had boasted of the "irresistible power" which was to enable him to overthrow the allied forces gathered in the Crimea, and here the artist shows very graphically the shattering of this "irresistible power" and of the "unlimited means." Of all the cartoons which Leech produced there is none which enjoys a more enduring fame than the one entitled "General FévrierTurned Traitor." Certainly no other in the whole series of Crimean War cartoons appearing inPunchcompares with it in power. Yet splendid and effective as it is, there is in it a cruelty worthy of Grandville or Gillray, and when it appeared it caused a shudder to run through all England. The Russian Emperor had boasted in a speech on the subject of the Crimean War that, whatever forces France and England might be able to send to the front, Russia possessed two generals on whom she could always rely, General Janvier andGeneral Février. In other words, Nicholas I. cynically alluded to the hardship of the Russian winter, on which he counted to reduce greatly by death the armies of the Allies in the Crimea. But toward the end of the winter, the Emperor himself died of pulmonary apoplexy, after an attack of influenza. In a flash, Leech seized upon the idea.General Février had turned traitor.Under this title, the cartoon was published byPunchin its issue of March 10, 1855. General Février (Death in the uniform of a Russian general) is placing his deadly hand on the breast of Nicholas, and the icy cold of the Russian winter—the ally in whom the Emperor had placed his trust—has recoiled upon himself. The tragic dignity and grim significance of this cartoon made a deep impression upon Ruskin, who regarded it as representing in the art of caricature what Hood's "Song of the Shirt" represents in poetry. "The reception of the last-named woodcut," he says, "was in several respects a curious test of modern feeling ... There are some points to be regretted in the execution of the design, but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken and of its answer could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded for the people; and I believe that to all persons accustomed to the earnest forms of art it contained a profound and touching lesson. The notable thing was, however, that it offended personsnotin earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite journalism of Society. This fate is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work in these days, whether poetry or painting; but what added to the singularity in this case was that coarse heartlessness was even more offended than polite heartlessness."

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