The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature

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1848, may be read like an open book. The adversaries of the government of 1830 were of two kinds. One kind, of which Admiral Carrel was a type, resorted to passionate argument, to indignant eloquence. The other kind resorted to the methods of the Fronde; they made war by pin-pricks, by bursts of laughter, with all the resources of French gayety and wit. In this method the leading spirit was Philipon, who understood clearly the power that would result from the closest alliance between la presse et l'image. Even before La Caricature was founded the features of the last of the

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the public lack of confidence. The first of these, an eloquent lithograph by Daumier, represents a powerfully built and resolute young journeyman printer standing with hands clinched, ready to defend the liberty of the press. In the background are two groups. In the one Charles X., already worsted in an encounter, lies prone upon the earth; in the other Louis Philippe, waving his ubiquitous umbrella, is with difficulty restrained from assuming the aggressive. The second of these cartoons

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Philippe, is clasping his hands, it is simply to rub them together with joy; and through his fingers, half hiding his countenance, one may detect a sly grin." The obsequious attitude of the members of Parliament came in for its share of satirical abuse. "This is not a Chamber, it is a Kennel," is the title of a spirited lithograph by Grandville, representing the French statesmen as a pack of hounds fawning beneath the lash of their imperious keeper, Casimir Périer. Another characteristic cartoon of Grandville's represents the legislature as an "Infernal laboratory for extracting the quintessence of politics"-a composition which, in its crowded detail, its grim and uncanny suggestiveness, and above all its bizarre distortions of the human face and form, shows more plainly than the work of any other French caricaturist the influence of Gillray. A collection of grinning skulls are labeled "Analysis of Human Thought"; state documents of Louis Philippe are being cut and weighed and triturated, while in the foreground a legislator with distended cheeks is wasting an infinite lot of breath upon a blowpipe in his effort to distill the much-sought-for quintessence from a retort filled with fragments of the words "Bonapartism," "anarchy," "equality," "republic," etc. One of the palpable results of the "political quintessence" of Louis Philippe's government took the form of heavy imposts, and these also afforded a subject for Grandville's graphic pencil. "The Public Thrown to the Imposts in the Great Pit of the Budget" first appeared in La Caricature. It represented the various taxes under which France was suffering in the guise of strange and unearthly animals congregated in a sort of bear pit, somewhat similar to the one which attracts the attention of all visitors to the city of Berne. The spectacle is one given by the government in power for the amusement of all those connected in any way with public office: in other words, the salaried officials who draw their livelihood from the taxes imposed upon the people. It is for their entertainment that the tax-paying public is being hurled to the monsters below-monsters more uncouth and fantastic than even Mr. H. G. Wells's fertile brain conceived in his "War of the Worlds," or "First Men in the Moon." Daumier in his turn had to have his fling at the min

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in the r?le of Bluebeard, who, dagger in hand, is about to slay his latest wife. The wife, the "Constitution," lies prostrate, hound with thongs. The corpses of this political Bluebeard's other victims may be seen through the open door of the secret chamber. Leaning over the balcony and scanning the horizon is the figure of Sister Anne, in this case symbolic of the Press. The unfortunate "Constitution," feeling that her last minute has come, calls out: "Sister Press, do y

g to stop the course of liberty by thrusting between the spokes of the wheels sticks and rods inscribed "Lawsuits against the Press," while Talleyrand comes to their aid by throwing beneath the wheels stones symbolizing "standing ar

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