cuments adopted them. We are surprised to find prefixed to Rushworth's and Nalson's historical collections, two such political prints! Nalson's was an act of retributive justice; but he seems to have been aware, that satire in the shape of pictures is a language very attractive to the multitude; for he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio of the trial of Charles the First. Of the happiest of these political prints is one by Taylor the water-poet, not included in his folio, but prefixed to his "Mad fashions, odd fashions or the emblems of these distracted times." It is the figure of a man whose eyes have left their sockets, and whose legs have usurped the place of his arms; a horse on his hind legs is drawing a cart; a church is inverted; fish fly in the air; a candle burns with the flame downwards; and the mouse and rabbit are pursuing the cat and the fox!

The animosities of national hatreds have been a fertile source of these vehicles of popular feeling -which discover themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibited one another under the most extravagant figures. The political carica

tures of the French, in the seventeenth century, are numerous. The badauds of Paris amused themselves for their losses, by giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had obtained; seven or eight Spaniards are seen seated around a large turnip, with their frizzled mustachios, their hats en pot à beurre; their long rapiers, with their pummels down to their feet, and their points up to their shoulders; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and pieces of garlick stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in as great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We have largely participated in the vindictive spirit, which these grotesque emblems keep up among the people; they mark the secret feelings of national pride. The Greeks despised foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be slaves*; the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small territory, would be

* A passage may be found in Aristotle's politics, vol. i. c. 3–7; where Aristotle advises Alexander to govern the Greeks like his subjects, and the barbarians like slaves; for that the one he was to consider as companions, and the other as creatures of an inferior race.

masters of the world: the Italians placed a line of demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by their mountains. The Spaniards once imagined that the conferences of God with Moses on Mount Sinai were in the Spanish language. If a Japanese becomes the friend of a foreigner, he is considered as committing treason to his emperor; and rejected as a false brother in a country which we are told is figuratively called Tenka, or the kingdom under the Heavens. John Bullism is not peculiar to Englishmen; and patriotism is a noble virtue, when it secures our independence without depriving us of our humanity.

The civil wars of the league in France, and those in England under Charles the First, bear the most striking resemblance; and in examining the revolutionary scenes exhibited by the graver in the famous satire Menippés, we discover the foreign artist revelling in the caricature of his ludicrous and severe exhibition; and in that other revolutionary period of La Fronde, there was a mania for political songs; the curious have formed them into collections; and we, not only have "the Rump songs" of Charles the First's times, but have repeated this kind of evidence of the public

feeling at many subsequent periods. Caricatures and political songs might with us furnish a new sort of history; and perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some particular events, not to be found in more grave authorities.

207

AUTOGRAPHS*.

THE art of judging of the characters of persons by their writing can only have any reality, when the pen, acting without constraint, may become an instrument guided by, and indicative of the natural dispositions. But regulated as the pen is now too often by a mechanical process, which the present race of writing-masters seem to have contrived for their own convenience, a whole school exhibits a similar hand-writing; the pupils are forced in their automatic motions, as if acted on by the pressure of a steam-engine; a bevy of beauties will now write such fac-similes of each other, that in a heap of letters presented to the most sharp-sighted lover, to select that of his mistress-though like Bassanio among the caskets, his happiness should be risked on the choice

A small volume which I met with at Paris, entitled "L'Art de juger du Caractere des Hommes sur leurs Ecritures," is curious for its illustrations, consisting of twentyfour plates, exhibiting fac-similes of the writing of eminent and other persons, correctly taken from the original autographs.