tical purposes, had the same fault, although it must be confessed that his admirable print of Wilkes with the Cap of Liberty was about as forcible a piece of true caricature as any with which Mr. Tenniel at the present day could excite the public laughter. The next most successful caricaturist after Hogarth was Paul Sandby. He led the attack against Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager. At that time, the feeling against Scotchmen was at fever heat on this side of the Border; and Sandby tickled the popular prejudice by his sketch of the two Scotchmen travelling to London on a witch's broomstick, with the inscription-"The land before them is as the Garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness."

But we now come to him who has been termed, and we think with perfect justice, the greatest of English caricaturists, and perhaps of all caricaturists of modern times, whose works are known-James Gillray. Of the life of this Rubens of caricature, perhaps the less said the better. But with regard to a name so universally known, a few facts seem almost indispensable. Gillray is supposed to have been of Scottish extraction. His father, an old soldier and out-pensioner, was sexton of a burial-ground at Chelsea, where Gillray was born in 1757. Young Gillray was a Republican in opinion, and his first caricatures were directed against the Government. Fox and his following came in especially for the wit and virulence of Gillray's pencil; and when the affair of the Prince of Wales and his wife became a public scandal, the caricaturist was in his glory. Thick and fast at this time came the most daring, spirited, and at the same time most popular of all his works. In the most frequented thoroughfares of London, crowds would gather round the printsellers' windows to revel over Gillray's last sketch. That their extreme broadness would at the present day exclude them, under penalty of the law, from public exhibition, is only to say that a greater licence was allowed in those days, and that Lord Campbell's Act was as yet undreamt of. Gillray was as bitter, too, against the King himself. George the Third's parsimonious spirit, amounting almost to avarice, was the common talk of the day; and the new caricaturist, who drew all his inspirations from the popular experiences of the moment, whether in the newspapers, pamphlets, or public gossip, lashed the King's weaknesses most unmercifully.

One of the most severe of his skits is entitled "A New Way to Pay the National Debt." From the door of the Treasury, George and his Queen, with their band of pensioners, are issuing, their pockets and her Majesty's apron so full of money that the coins are dropping out, and rolling all over the ground. Pitt, meanwhile, whose pockets are in the same comfortable condition, is adding to the royal treasures large bags of the national revenue, to the evident satisfaction, if we may judge by his smiles, of the King. To the left, a crippled soldier sits on the ground, and asks in vain for relief; while the wall above is covered with torn placards, bearing such inscriptions as "God save the King;" "Charity: a Romance;" "From Germany, just arrived, a large and royal assortment, &c. ;" and "Last dying speech of fifty-four malefactors, executed for robbing a hen-roost." The last hit was very severe, alluding as it did to the well-known harshness with which trespassers on his Majesty's private farm were prosecuted. On the right hand side of the picture the Prince of Wales is depicted in ragged attire, and manifestly in as much want of relief as the cripple, while the Duke of Orleans offers him that help which his royal father refuses. Immediately above the head of the Prince are the familiar Bohemian plumes, but with the unfamiliar motto, "Ich starve." This is certainly one of Gillray's most remarkable caricatures, and may be cited as a fair specimen of his style in the rest.

Gillray's hostility to the King at this time seems, however, to have arisen in the first place more from a sort of pique or wounded amour propre than from any public spirit or innate republicanism of his own. The reasons have been thus described:

According to a story which seems to be authentic, Gillray's dislike of the King was embittered by an incident somewhat similar to that by which George II. had provoked the anger of Hogarth. Gillray had visited France, Flanders, and Holland, and he had made sketches, a few of which he had engraved.

He accompanied the painter, Loutherbourg, who had left his native city of Strasburg to settle in England, and became the King's favourite artist, to assist him by making groups for his great painting of the "Siege of Valenciennes"-Gillray sketching groups of figures, while Loutherbourg drew the landscapes and buildings.

daughters, whose faces are made so sour that Peter Pindar used to say the sight of them set his teeth on edge

"I don't understand these caricature fellows."

Perhaps the very word he used was intended as a sneer upon Gillray, who, we are told, felt the affront deeply; and he proceeded to retort by a caricature which struck at once at one of the King's vanities and at his political prejudices.

George III. imagined himself a great connoisseur in the fine arts, and the caricature was entitled "A Connoisseur examining a Cooper." It represented the King looking at the celebrated miniature of Oliver Cromwell, by the English painter, Samuel Cooper. When Gillray had completed this, he is said to have exclaimed

"I wonder if the royal connoisseur will understand this?"

It was published on the 18th of June, 1792, and cannot have failed to produce a sensation at that period of revolutions. The King is made to exhibit a strange mixture of alarm with astonishment in contemplating the features of this great overthrower of kingly power, at a moment when all kingly power was threatened.

It will be remarked, too, that the satirist has not overlooked the royal character for domestic economy: the King is looking at the picture by the light of a candle-end stuck on a "save-all."

Two other caricatures by Gillray at the King's expense are worth mentioning, if only for their wittiness. In one, Queen Charlotte is seen in the domestic avocation of frying sprats, while on the other hand the King is busy preparing the royal breakfast by toasting muffins.

The "Anti-Saccharites; or, John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of Sugar," is extremely rich. This "noble example of economy" shows the royal family, the King, Queen, and five princesses-charming figures-seated at the breakfast-table drinking tea without sugar. His Majesty is reso

"Oh, my dear creatures, do but taste ityou can't think how nice it is without sugar; and then consider how much work you will save the poor blackamoors by leaving off the use of it; and, above all, remember how much expense you'll save your poor papa. Oh, it's charming, cooling drink."

But when this country became involved in war with France, Gillray changed his subjects of satire. He ceased to attack King George and the royal family, he no longer employed his pencil on objects of domestic raillery, but henceforth reserved all his keenness and sarcasm for the enemies of his country-the "hateful French." For, Republican though he was at heart, he hated thoroughly-as it was the fashion then and years after to hate, as Nelson and Englishmen generally hated-the French simply because they were French.

We have spoken of Gillray's republicanism; but, like many others of the same creed, he had no particular desire to become a martyr to his cause. That his change to professed Toryism, his cessation from attacks on the King and the Government, were due in a great measure to a handsome private subsidy, is mostly understood. But though publicly a Tory, he would, the elder Landseer tells us, in safe companies and in his cups, propose the health of David, the Jacobin painter, on his knees.

We have not space here to enter more particularly into the merits of Gillray's genius. From the re-impressions that have been published of recent years, an idea can be formed of this prince of caricaturists better than from any description of his works.

Even these were near being lost. His name had fallen so much into oblivion with a later generation, that the plates were on the point of being sold for old copper, when an enterprising London publisher luckily stepped in, and saved them at the right moment.

The close of Gillray's career presents a very mournful picture. He had always earned plenty of money; and like many other men of genius, spent the fruits of his labour in riot and dissipation. As he

grew older, his evil habits grew worse. Towards the end of 1811, he became unable to produce works of any popular merit. Some of his designs subsequent to this date have been preserved. Strange and weird with. the magic of genius they certainly are; but they prove only too painfully that the genius had lost its balance. His mind gradually sank into a confirmed idiotcy; and in this state he died, in 1815. He lies in St. James's Churchyard, Piccadilly.

Rowlandson, who was born in 1756 and died in 1827, was another professor of the art of the caricaturist. Doubtless he stands second to Gillray, and may in some respects be considered as his equal.

He was distinguished by a remarkable versatility of talent, by a great fecundity of imagination, by a skill in grouping quite equal to that of Gillray, and with a singular ease in forming his groups of a great variety of figures. It has been remarked, too, that no artist possessed the power of Rowlandson of expressing so much with so little effort. James Sayer was a contemporary of Gillray and Rowlandson; but he was by no means a man either of the same skill as a draughtsman or the same force as a humorist. His caricatures were exclusively political; and, like a true man of business, he laid his talents at the services of a party. Pitt was his Mæcenas, and the great commoner rewarded his faithful servant with no grudging liberality. The fat sinecures of Marshal of the Court of Exchequer, Receiver of the Sixpenny Dues, and Cursitor, were not bad acknowledgments of past services. The caricature by which Sayer is best known, and which does the greatest credit to his ability, is "Carlo Khan's Triumphal Entry into Leadenhall-street," on the occasion of Fox's India Bill, in 1783. The interest of the sketch was confined principally to the public sentiment of the moment, but it is a good specimen of that laboured skill which may be said to have been Sayer's chief merit.

Other caricaturists of the same epoch were the clever and good-humoured Henry Bunbury, whose forte lay more in social subjects than political squibs; and Isaac Cruikshank, the father of George, who has lately 'gone in" so pertinaciously for the reputation of a suggester of certain well-known and successful novels. The reputation of Isaac Cruikshank has been eclipsed by his son's genius; but he is well worthy of a passing

notice. Isaac's caricatures were quite on a par with, if they did not often excel, any of those of his contemporaries after Gillray and Rowlandson. "Isaac Cruikshank," we are told, "published many prints anonymously, and among the numerous caricatures of the latter end of the last century we meet with many which have no name attached to them. It will be remarked that in his acknowledged works he caricatures the Opposition; but perhaps, like other caricaturists of his time, he worked privately for anybody who would pay him, and was as willing to work against the Government as for it, for most of the prints which betray their author only by their style are caricatures of Pitt and his measures."

Isaac left two sons-George, whom we all know so well, and Robert. George Cruikshank originally intended to enter the lists in a higher style of art; but an accident, happily alike for his own fame and the gratification of the public, stopped him in his intention. He had attempted to gain admission into the Academy. That "close borough" was even closer still when George was a young man. The space for students was much restricted, and always, to new aspirants, already full. When Cruikshank sent up his plaster model to Fuseli, then the Professor of Painting, the reply of the half-mad teacher of art was characteristic but disheartening: "He may come, but he will have to fight for a seat." Cruikshank made no further attempt; and soon after the public hailed with delight, in his illustrations to the political squibs of the famous bookseller, William Hone, a new master of the craft of caricature. His works subsequently are so well known, and his style is so familiar to almost every one, that it is unnecessary to say more about this popular favourite.

George Cruikshank is the last actual representative of the school of political caricaturists of the reign of George III. But another worthy name follows closely upon his time. We mean the famous "H. B." of the past generation-or, to give his real name, Richard Doyle.

The earlier numbers of Punch are a history of Doyle's style in themselves; and when our contemporary offended Doyle by its attacks upon the Roman Catholics, Punch lost its most valuable artist. Yet, even now, with each recurring Wednesday, when Punch is laid upon our tables, we may feast our eyes on that inimitable piece of

humour of Doyle's contained in the frontispiece. The expression of the dog Toby's face alone is a provocative of laughter; and as we study the whole sketch from top to bottom, until we come to his signature in the left hand corner-the letter D surmounted by a bird, we conclude sorrowfully that none since have rivalled "Dicky Doyle."

With Doyle, the line of regular British caricaturists closes. There can hardly be said to be a school, properly so called, at the present day; but, as a reviewer in the "Quarterly" has said, "the popularity which our present favourites have earned is probably more real, certainly much more extensive, than that gained by their most successful predecessors, from Hogarth to Cruikshank, with whose names that of Leech, and of his living associates-of whom we need only name Doyle, John Tenniel, and Charles Keene as specimens will assuredly find their places in the future annals of art."

A KISS.

WHAT is perfect bliss ?"

"My love doth ask of me;

"Sweetheart, give me a kissIll give it back to thee."

A WOMAN!

A SILENT eyes,

Her beauty's superhuman; She keeps a secret when she tries, And yet she is a woman.

are as flourishing, and certainly as good, at Burlington House as at Paris or Brussels; but the Englishman must admit, with a sigh, that he has no grand art to show among the canvases that represent the year's labours of the exponents of British art. The majority of our painters go on, year after year, painting the same old hackneyed subjects, the same familiar portraits, the same bits of landscape. They are so generally successful because they are careful never to put themselves into the way of failure. They clear the ditch, and are satisfied. Should they essay the river? Should they try to rise above silk and satin in metallic folds, above pretty bits of landscape, and portraits, whose mission of usefulness is to boil the family pot? Should they try to rise above themselves, above the dead level of domestic prettinesses in their compositions, and strive to be, some of them, worthy successors of Sir Joshua, and Turner, and the few other great men who have kept the British School above contempt?

The foreign artists have answered the same question abroad by setting an example -they have a grand school, and they ask for it here.

But while so few of our painters become great enough to earn a European fame, how many shine with a lustre above mediocrity. One of the most promising and original young painters of the English school, five and twenty years ago, was the subject of this notice.

John Everett Millais was born at Southampton in 1829. In his ninth year he entered a drawing academy, and at eleven became a student at the Royal Academy. His first exhibited picture was at the Academy in 1846-" Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru," an ambitious subject for a young man of eighteen. During his Academy course, Millais had conceived a distaste for their system of instruction; and with his friends, W. Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, he set off to look in nature for the effects the old masters had embodied in their pictures. The result of this appeal from art to nature was the foundation of the preRaphaelite school. Mr. Millais's principal pictures, executed while pre-Raphaelite influences were fresh upon him, were, in 1850, "Our Saviour," and "Ferdinand lured by Ariel;" 1851, "Mariana in the Moated Grange," and "The Woodman's Daughter;" and in 1852, "The Huguenot" and "Ophelia."

At this time Mr. Ruskin came forward, and defended the pre-Raphaelites with all the power of his eloquence and learning; and Millais was the founder of a little school, written up in the Times and in his works on art by the greatest art-critic of the age. In 1853, Mr. Millais was elected an associate of the Academy, and became R.A. in December, 1863.

There is not now very much left in his works of the pre-Raphaelite fever of twenty years ago; but his pictures are always artistic and original in composition, and highly skilful in execution. Mr. Millais stands at the head of original thinkers among the R.A.s. He went from art to nature, and he has got a rich reward for his pains.

"FOR VALOUR" IN WESTERN AFRICA.-PART II.

THE

BY CAPTAIN E. ROGERS.

HE chiefs having taken their seats in a circle at the base of the tree, their following distributed itself in the shade around, or patrolled within view, to guard against surprise. At the feet of the Marabout chiefs sat the renegade Sumar, whose cowardly visage showed symptoms of distrust in his company. I remained in the saddle, and addressed the motley assembly through the medium of a native interpreter who had accompanied me. This man had but one arm, his dexter having been amputated rather roughly some years previously by a portion of the very tribe around us now, on an occasion similar in many respects to the present. The officer employed on the mission at that time gave some real or imaginary offence, and incurred great danger thereby having to cut his way out of the town accompanied by his guide, but not without being severely handled; and, in fact, each of them lost an arm in his efforts to escape.

But once during the palaver did I feel any qualms of suspicion in my interpreter's translation of the speeches made. It was when the apostate Soninkee evidently began to expostulate with the Marabout chiefs, and vehemently called upon his mercenaries not to desert him, but to make away with or drive off the tubabo.

"Interpret faithfully what that fellow is saying," I remarked quietly, "or both of you are dead men."

These words, and the simple action of

uncovering the holsters, appeared to have the desired effect; for, notwithstanding the Sumar's alternate prayers and threats, the Marabouts seemed open to reason, and inclined to accept my arbitration.

I was accordingly met with profuse promises of immediate peace and withdrawal of their forces, provided the Soninkees were induced to retire likewise, make restitution of the Sumar's confiscated property, and exchange prisoners.

All this, taking the concluding ceremony into consideration, was imposing and plausible enough; for, after four hours' deliberation, the final rite of swearing on the Koran was performed with all due solemnity. The sacred volume having been laid on the ground in the centre of the circle, the chiefs advanced, and, kneeling down, placed their right hands on the open page, and following the low murmurings of a priest who dictated the oath, they swore to return to their Cabba's town, Goonjoor.

Furnished with these promises and oaths, I now proceeded to the camp of the Soninkees, and claimed their word in turn. Whereupon, in an angry and indignant debate, a rude rejection of the terms was at first contemplated; but consent was finally given-albeit reluctantly, and with a distrust which after-events proved were characteristically warranted. That same evening the town was vacated by the Marabouts, the outposts abandoned, and all sentries withdrawn; while within the walls of their recovered capital peace was inaugurated by the Soninkees with the dances, tom-tom beating, and drunken orgies usual on such occasions.

Daylight once more brought its accustomed routine of peaceful labour; and the returned inhabitants, exulting in their new-found liberty, issued forth into the fields to cut their coos or plant the ground-nut. The palm-wine women once more traversed the country, balancing on their heads with easy grace their liquid wares for the market in Bathurst; and children gambolled in the neighbouring woods as freely as the monkeys and squirrels in the bending boughs above them. Two days thus passed in unsuspecting security; and the Soninkees were even having it in contemplation to level the stockades, at my request, as an earnest of their continued pacific intentions, when an event occurred which suddenly revived hostilities, and thoroughly disclosed the innate