lithography. We have already observed how much difficulty its artists found in departing from the rules of classical outline and correct drawing, so long as the old-fashioned line engraving prevailed, and the consequent inferiority of French to English caricature in breadth, its superiority in correctness. The introduction and great popularity of lithography in France seems to have altogether changed the popular taste. Artists now dash off, rather than embody, their humorous conceptions in the sketchiest of all possible styles, and that which affords the greatest licence for grotesque distortions of figure and face. Boilly, a clever and fertile lithographer, was perhaps the first to bring this style of composition into vogue. But to such an extent has the revolution now gone, while we, on the other hand, have been pruning the luxuriance of the old genius of caricature, that the positions of the two countries seem to have become reversed, and England to be now the country of classic, France of grotesque art; in the comic line of which any reader may judge for himself, by comparing the style of the cuts in 'Punch,' for instance, with those in the Charivari.' We cannot say that we find the change on the other side of the Channel an improvement, or that we have been enabled to acquire a taste for the hasty lithographed caricatures of popular figures and scenes which encumber French print-shops. The works of Bunbury, among English artists of this kind of renown, perhaps most nearly approach them; but these, rough though they are, have, at all events, a body and substance, and consequently a vigour, which their Gallic successors appear to us to lack, and which they endeavour too often to supply by loose exaggeration. However, it is idle to set up our own canons of taste in opposition to that of a nation, and a foreign nation into the bargain; and we may do our readers more service by giving them a few short notices of the leading artists who have risen to popularity in modern France by this style of composition.

Nicolas Toussaint Charlet had an education and parentage somewhat like those of our Gillray; born in 1792, the son of an old dragoon of Sambre-et-Meuse, he began his career in a not very noble occupation, being employed in the office where military recruits were registered and measured; and it was in that function, possibly, that he picked up and stored in his memory those thousand types of grotesque young conscripts and old grognards, 'enfants de troupe,' tourlourous,' and 'gamins,' with which he filled the shop-windows while amusing the multitude with their darling scènes populaires.' He was not exactly a caricaturist in the peculiar sense which we have given to the word, but an artist 'de genre;' in his own peculiar line

few

few have surpassed him. It must be noticed that his sturdy Bonapartism evinced itself in some ambitious attempts at more serious compositions; one of which, La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas,' established his fame in 1816, while an 'Episode de la Campagne de Russie' (1836) is ranked at the head of his works by some of his admirers. But for our part, we greatly prefer the exquisite naïveté, though without much of the English vigour, which characterises some of his popular scenes; such-to quote one among a thousand-as that in which a peasant, looking down with the utmost gravity on a comrade who is lying in the road, helplessly drunk, exclaims, Voilà pourtant comme je serai dimanche!' Charlet, who died in 1845, left some two thousand lithographed designs, besides numerous water-colours and etchings.

6

Paul Chevalier Gavarni, born in 1801, ranks at the head of the living caricaturists of France, unless the Vicomte Amédée de Noé (under his nom de plume, or rather de crayon, of 'Cham,' Ham the son of Noah) be supposed to contest with him that eminence. The journal Les Gens du Monde' (1835), and subsequently the Charivari,' owed to him the greater part of their celebrity. If not equal to Charlet in the 'naïf' and simply popular style, Gavarni excels him in satirical force and in variety. Twenty-five years hence (says Théophile Gautier) it is through Gavarni that the world will know of the existence of Duchesses of the Rue du Helder, of Lorettes, students, and so forth.' Gavarni visited England in 1849, where, according to his biographer, M. de Lacaze (in the Nouvelle Biographie Générale'), he took so profound a dislike to our English aristocratic social system (it was the year, be it remembered, in which the doctrine la propriété c'est le vol,' took some short hold on Parisian spirits), that he fell into a fit of 'le spleen,' became misanthropic, and produced nothing for a long time but sketches of 'gin-shop frequenters, thieves, street-sweepers, Irishmen, and the beggars of St. Giles's and Whitechapel; but we are happy to learn, from the same authority, that he soon recovered his gaiety in the less oppressive atmosphere of Paris. His 'Œuvres Choisies' were published as long ago as 1845, in four volumes. 'Déjà,' says Champfleury, son œuvre est curieuse à consulter comme l'expression d'un peintre de mœurs épris d'idéal élégant dans une époque bourgeoise.'

Completing these brief notices of modern French caricaturists with the mere mention of the great artist Gustave Doré, who has lately condescended to some clever extravagances allied to caricature, and of that eccentric novelty Griset, we must now conclude our hasty retrospect of the art in general. The insti

tution of the comic illustrated newspaper' has now made the tour of the world; the United States furnish abundant specimens ; Germany and Italy toil manfully in the wake of France and England; we have even seen political caricatures from Rio de Janeiro nearly as good as the ordinary productions of either. But it is impossible to follow a subject so greatly widening in its dimensions; and as cheapness of execution, while it extends the popularity of this class of compositions, diminishes the labour expended on them, we have not to expect for the future either productions of so much interest, or artists of such celebrity, as some of those dealt with in this article.

ART. IX.-1. Speeches of Mr. Bright at Blackburn, Birmingham, and Rochdale, November and December, 1865, and January, 1866. Times' Newspaper. London.

2. An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution. By John Earl Russell. New Edition. London, 1865.

HE task which the Parliament that is to meet next month

Twill be called upon to perform falls little short in difficulty of any that has ever been imposed upon a similar assembly. It is true that the material condition of the country furnishes no cause for anxiety. Our wealth is overflowing, our commercial prospects are unclouded, save by the excess of our own activity; and nothing seems likely to disturb either the peace of Europe or the profound contentment which this island is enjoying. Those who recognise no political barometer except the returns of the Board of Trade and the budgets of Chancellors of the Exchequer may well disbelieve that there can be any cause for anxiety upon an horizon of such unbroken brilliancy. There certainly is no probability that this Parliament will be called upon to pacify any violent political excitement, or to relieve the depression of any great national interest. But there are responsibilities greater even than those of providing against present disorder or distress. The task of reconstructing the institutions from which all our prosperity and all our tranquil freedom flow is heavier than any other that could be laid upon English legislators; and its weight is terribly aggravated by the fact that the Parliament which must bear it is a Parliament without a leader, and without a purpose. The leader whom it would have followed, and the mission it was charged to fulfil, have alike been removed by the hand of death. It was returned to keep Lord Palmerston in office: and Lord Palmerston is gone.

Whatever

Whatever object it now accomplishes, into whatever legislation it may blindly stumble, it cannot give any effect to the political feelings which called it into existence. That he has left no successor to carry out his ideas, and maintain his political combinations, is due to the peculiarity of the position he had formed for himself. He commanded the affection of his countrymen more than any Minister since the days of Chatham, and he received political support from them in no grudging measure. But the support was given to the man, and not to his ideas. Politicians of pure breed-those who subordinate every other motive of action to their political convictions,-rather acquiesced in him than followed him. Those who, during the last ten years of his life, rendered to him an earnest and enthusiastic allegiance, which never flinched or faltered, were the great non-political mass of the nation. It is quite true that the principle upon which his government was carried on-the combination of Liberal profession and Conservative practice-represented the genuine state of mind of a large portion of the educated classes, imbued to a greater or less extent with Liberal theories, but unable to conceal from themselves that those theories in the laboratory of the world's experience were working out very unsatisfactory results. But the same would have been true whatever the dominant opinions of the day had been. Partly from a sensitiveness to the contagion of opinion, but more from political pliability, Lord Palmerston, in the course of an eventful life, was always found steering in much the same direction as the majority of his countrymen, to whatever quarter the humour of the moment might happen to be carrying them. But this was not the quality which enabled him to establish so firm a hold on the affections of the nation. Suppleness is not a passport to English popularity, as some who have tried to plagiarise Lord Palmerston's character have found. In his earlier years it may have been useful in raising him to a conspicuous position, for it is a quality convenient in subordinates. But the enthusiasm which followed his later years was directed to a very different portion of his character. It was given by people whose political preferences were feeble to the sterling vigour and manliness which events gave him the opportunity of exhibiting during his later years. Opinions among his supporters, so far as they formed any, very often have differed widely concerning the policy he was pursuing; but the homage they rendered was to qualities, not opinions. The bold patriotism of his language when many politicians of all schools were inclined to truckle to the Peace party; the courage with which, unaided by any single leading man, he took up the Crimean war at its most disastrous period, and worked it out to

victory;

victory; the brave front he showed to the most formidable par. liamentary combinations in defence of subordinates, near or distant, even when they were most utterly in the wrong; the contempt of ease with which, in spite of extreme age, he clung to a laborious office-these were characteristics which may not in all cases assist the historian in pronouncing a favourable judgment upon the policy of his administration, but they appealed directly to the heart of the English nation. If any great disaster had happened under his administration, or if any wild political storm had crossed his path, these claims might not have availed him; but in the profound repose of political feeling which it was his chief aim to foster, they secured for him a personal attachment almost universal throughout all classes of the nation, and which grew stronger and stronger up to the last hour of his life.

The fact that his supremacy was personal, and not political, explains why it is that, powerful as he was for so many years, he has left no successor and no school. Castlereagh and Canning were formed under Pitt, and lived faithfully to carry out his ideas. Peel left behind him a group of statesmen, deeply imbued with his political philosophy, and in more than one instance singularly gifted with the talents needed to carry it out. But the third great statesman of the century leaves behind him no single man of mark whose opinions can be described by his name, or to whom the nation can transfer the affection with which it clung to him. Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone have their own claims to prefer for the support of their partisans; but though they succeed for the moment to the majority which was returned to keep him in office, they are in no sense heirs to the popular feeling upon which his strength was based.

The conduct of the new Government, so far as it has been open to public view, betrays a consciousness that they hold Lord Palmerston's legacy by a precarious tenure. They did not feel, as he did, that their own merits were sufficient to ensure support. They began casting about immediately for new strength in quarters and by means that to some of them must have been galling. The first thing to be done was to mark the victims who were to make the vacancies; and in doing so they felt that a selection could hardly be made without indicating the policy that they intended to pursue. And it must be admitted that both in selecting the officials to be turned out, and the aspirants that were to be let in, they succeeded in symbolising with great distinctness the political camp to which they were about to carry their hitherto somewhat neutral banner. If the rumours that were given to the world by a provincial paper of authority may

be