peared in 1735, during a ministerial crisis, when the opposition had high hopes of ousting the tenacious Walpoles. An "Advertisement" was published, in which was offered for sale a "neat and curious collection of wellchosen similes, allusions, metaphors, and allegories from the best plays and romances, modern and ancient, proper to adorn a panegyric on the glorious patriots designed to succeed the present ministry." The author gave notice that "all sublunary metaphors of a new minister being a Rock, a Pillar, a Bulwark, a Strong Tower, or a Spire Steeple will be allowed very cheap;" but celestial ones, being brought from the other world at a great expense, must be held at a higher rate. The SIR ROBERT WALPOLE PARING THE NAILS OF THE BRITISH LION. author announced that he had pre of human passions, nor change any other element in the difficult problem of existence. Walpole bribed, Swift maligned, Bolingbroke intrigued, Charteris seduced, and Marlborough peculated just as if the New Light had not dawned and the miracles had remained intact. Do we not even in our own time see inquiring youth, bred in straitlaced homes, assuming that since there are now two opinions as to the origin of things, it is no longer necessary to comply with the moral laws? The splendid personages of that period seem to have been in a moral condition similar to that of such a youth. It was the fashion to be dissolute; it was "provincial" to obey those laws of our being from compliance with which all human welfare and all honest joy have come. Politics were still most rudimentary. The English people were fully resolved on keeping out the dull and deadly Stuarts; but the price they had to pay for this was to submit to the rule of the dull and difficult Georges, whose bodies were in England and their hearts in Hanover. Between the king and the people stood Sir Robert Walpole as good a man as could have held the place -who went directly to the point with members and writers, ascertained their price, and paid it. According to one of Pope's bitter notes on the Dunciad, where he quotes a Parliamentary report, this minister in ten years paid to writers and publishers of newspapers "fifty thousand pounds eighteen shillings!" How much he paid to members of Parliament was a secret known only to himself and the king. The venality of the press was frequently burlesqued, as well as the fulsome pomp of its purchased eulogies. A very good specimen is that which ap pared a collection of state satires, which would serve, with little variation, to libel a judge, a bishop, or a prime minister. "N.B.-The same satirist has collections of reasons ready by him against the ensuing peace, though he has not yet read the preliminaries or seen one article of the pacification." There was also a burlesque "Bill of Costs for a late Tory Election in the West," in which we find such items as "bespeaking and collecting a mob," "a set of No-Roundhead roarers," "a set of coffee-house praters," "Dissenter damners," "demolishing two houses," "committing two riots," "breaking windows," "roarers of the word CHURCH," "several gallons of Tory punch on church tombstones." It is questionable, however, if in all the burlesques of the period there was one more ridiculous than the narrative of an actual occurrence in April, 1715, when the footmen of members of the House of Commons met outside of the House, according to established custom, to elect a Speaker. The Tory footmen cast their votes for "Sir Thomas Morgan's servant," and the Whigs for "Mr. Strickland's man." A dispute arising, a fight ensued between the two parties, in the midst of which the House broke up, and the footmen were obliged to DUTCH NEUTRALITY.-1745. attend their masters. The next day, as soon as the House was in session, the fight was renewed, and after a desperate struggle the victorious Whigs carried their man three times in triumph round Westminster Hall, and then adjourned to a Whig ale-house, the landlord of which gave them a dinner, the footmen paying only for their drink. employed in Maine, when first a serious attempt was made to enforce the "Maine Law." Apothecaries and others colored their gin, put it into vials, and labeled it "Colic Water," "Make Shift," "The Ladies' Delight," with printed "Directions" to take two or three spoonfuls three or four times a day, "or as often as the fit takes you." Informers sprang into an importance never before known, and many of them invented snares to decoy men into violations of the law. So odious did they become that if one of them fell into the hands of the mob, he was lucky to escape with only a ducking in the Thames or a horse-trough. In short, the attempt was ill considered and premature, and after an experiment of two or three years it was given up, having contributed something toward the growing unpopularity of the ministry. The caricatures of the Walpole period preserve the record of the first attempt to lessen by law the intemperate drinking of gin-the most pernicious of the spirituous liquors. A law was passed imposing upon this article a very heavy excise, and prohibiting its sale in small quantities. But in 1736 England had not reached, by a century and a half, the development of civilization which admits of the adequate consideration of such a measure: nor can the poor man's gin ever be limited by law while the rich man's wine flows free. This gin law appears to have been killed by ridicule. Ballads lamenting the near decease of "Mother Gin" were sung in the streets; the gin-shop signs were hung with black, and there were of mock ceremonies of "Madame Geneva's Lying in State," "Moth-dio er Gin's Wake," and "Madame Gin's Funeral." Paragraphs notified the public that the funeral of Madame Gin was celebrated with great merriment, many of both sexes "getting soundly drunk," and a mob fol- i lowing her remains with torches. 77 The night before the measure went into operation was one of universal revel among the gin drinkers, and every one, we are toloql assured, carried off as much of the popular liquor, for future consumption, as he could pay for. The law was evaded by the expedients long afterward VOL LI.-No. 301.-4 T The downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, aft BRITISH IDOLATRY OF THE OPERA SINGER MINGOTTI.-1756. "Ra, ra, ra, rot ye, My name is Mingotti. If you worship me notti, ANTIQUARIES PUZZLED.-LONDON, 1756. presage overthrow. On the same day a similar"motion" was made in the House of Lords by Lord Carteret, where an equally violent discussion was followed by a vote sustaining the ministry. The exultation of the Walpole party inspired this famons caricature, in which we see the Opposition peers trying to reach office in a lordly coach and six, and the Commons trudging toward the same goal on foot, their leader, Pulteney, wheeling a load of Opposition newspapers, and leading his followers by the nose. Every politician of note on the side of the Opposition is in the picture: Lord Chesterfield is the postilion; the Duke of Argyle the coachman; Lord Carteret the gentle man inside the coach, who, becoming conscious of the breakdown, cries, "Let me get out!" Bubb Dodington is the spaniel between the coachman's legs; the footman behind the coach is Lord Cobham, and the outrider Lord Littelton. On the side of the Commons there is Sandys, dropping in despair his favorite, often-defeated "Place Bill," and exclaiming, "I thought what would come of putting him on the box!" Much of the humor and point of the picture is lost to us, because the peculiar relations of the persons portrayed to the public, to their party, and to one another can not now be perfectly recalled. er holding office for twenty years, was preceded by an animated fire of caricature, in which the adherents of Walpole held their own. The specimen given on page 49, entitled "The Motion," was reduced from one of the most famous caricatures of the reign of George II., and one of the most finely wrought of the century.* Horace Walpole, son of the great minister, wrote from Florence that the picture had "diverted him extremely," and that the likenesses were "admirable." To us the picture says nothing until it is explained; but every London apprentice of the period recognized Whitehall and the Treasury, toward which the Opposition was driving with such furious haste, Edition after edition of "The Motion" apand could distinguish most of the person-peared, one of which was so arranged that ages exhibited. A few days before this caricature appeared, Sandys, who was styled the motion-maker, from the frequency of his attempts to array the House of Commons against the Walpole ministry, moved once more an address to the king, that he would be pleased to remove Sir Robert Walpole from his presence and councils forever. The debate upon this motion was long and most vehement, and though the ministry triumphed, it was one of those bloody victories which it could be fitted to the frame of a lady's fan, a common device at the time. The Opposition retorted with a parody of the picture, which they styled "The Reason," in which Walpole figures as the coachman, driving the coach of state to destruction. Another parody was called "The Motive," in which the king was the passenger and Walpole the driver. Then followed "A Consequence of the Motion," "Motion upon Motion," "The Grounds," and others. The Walpole party surpassed their opponents in car *Caricature History of the Georges. THOMAS WRIGHT. icature, but caricature is powerless to turn Page 128. back a genuine tide of public feeling, and a 66 year later Sir Robert was honorably shelved | "The Church," says the pluralist, was in the House of Lords. made for me, not I for the Church;" and under the wheels of the coach is a book marked "The Thirty-nine Articles." One starving curate cries, piteously, "Lord, be merciful to us poor curates!" to which another responds, "And send us more comfortable livings!" It required a century of satire and remonstrance to get that one monstrous abuse of the Church Ring reduced to proportions approaching decency. Corruption in the city of New York in the darkest days of Tweed was less universal, less systematic, less remote from remedy, than that of the government of Great Britain under the least incapable of its four Georges. It was merely more decorous. From this time forward the history of Europe is recorded or burlesqued in the comic pictures of the shop window; not merely the conspicuous part played in it by ministers and kings, but the foibles, the fashions, the passions, the vices, the credulities, the whims, of each generation. The British rage for the Italian opera, the enormous sums paid to the singers, the bearish manners of Handel, the mania for gaming, the audacity of highwaymen, and the impositions upon popular credulity no more escape the satirist's pencil than Braddock's defeat, the Queen of Hungary's loss of Silesia, or William Pitt's timely, and also his ill-timed, fits of the gout. Nor were the abuses of the Church overlooked. One picture, entitled "The fat Pluralist and his lean Curates," published in 1733, exhibited a corpulent dignitary of the Church in a chariot drawn by six meagre and wretched curates. The portly priest carries under one arm a large church, and a cathedral under the other, while at his feet are two sucking pigs, a hen, and a goose, which he has taken as tithe from a farm-yard in the distance. A specimen of the harmless, good-humored satire aimed at the zealous antiquaries of the last century is given on the preceding page. This picture may have suggested to Mr. Dickens the familiar scene in Pickwick where the roving members of the Pickwick Club discover the stone commemorative of Bill Stumps. The mysterious inscription in the picture is, "Beneath this stone reposeth Claud Coster, tripe-seller of Impington, as doth his consort Jane." THE RUINED COTTAGE. Ar night-fall, coming through the wood, No lamp announced a living soul; Of life where all seemed dead. Until, observing curiously, And gazing back as on we went, When late we reached the village street, Yet in my mind I saw all night That child's face watching by the pane, At dawn I rose, and walking forth, With talk to ease time's load. He knew the young man once, he said, And devils round him swarm. For he would drink when morning came, And afternoons were all the same, All gone, his endless thirst to feed. Now she will have no trouble more; Her griefs have all been laid to sleep; He hardly lifts his heavy head; He lies in wretchedness all day; "Were there no children?" I inquired, And shuddered as I spoke the words, While two young maidens, health-inspired, Went singing by like birds. Ah, yes! Alas! one little girl. I wonder where the child is now? He, drowned in such a dreadful whirl, Can not much further go. The morning sun was brave and gay, And birds were filling earth with song. Still sits the child beside the pane, A. F. "TH CAPE COD, NANTUCKET, AND THE VINEYARD. CS.R THE Provincetown girls are so lightfooted they can walk to church without getting sand in their shoes." It is an old saying, which, if you carefully consider it, tells a story of Provincetown as well as of its maidens; but they add that the latter used to carry their shoes to meeting under their arms. To confess the plain truth, there is more sand in Provincetown than they can use there for building purposes. As you sweep around the Race, and past Wood End, and finally turn into the land-locked harborwondering, probably, how in the world you got into so snug a place-you see certainly a large number of comfortable houses, not to speak of the Town-hall perched on top of a tremendous sand dune; you see fishing vessels and fish-flakes and drying cod-fish, and sou'westers and pea-jackets, and pretty girls, and lots of boys who are not so pretty; but mainly you see sand. The beach is sand, of course. The roads are so sandy that the wagons have broad-tired wheels to make the draught easier; in the door-yards of the houses are roses and other flowers struggling with sand; and when you climb up to the Town-house, for the fine view, and the inscription which records the first landing of the Pilgrims, you will also, like the flowers, struggle with the sand. If it should be a breezy day on which you ramble about the narrow streets, you will see sand flying about as it is supposed to do in the great desert; and you will appreciate the care with which, in the suburbs, owners of vacant lots and the United States government cultivate beach-grass, a tough-rooted plant which Providence has provided to keep Provincetown and some other parts of the Cape from being blown away into the bay by a succession of easterly gales. Besides the sand, the most striking thing in Provincetown to a stranger is an all-pervading odor of fish. It is not, as you might innocently expect, a simple odor, but a very remarkable combination of smells, in which, if you attentively give your whole nose to it, you may distinguish every imaginable offense which a fish can commit against the sense of smell from the time he is first split open and washed in a bucket of water, through all the stages of frying, boiling, broiling, salting, pickling, washing out, drying in the sun, packing away in a storehouse, transporting to a schooner's hold, getting dropped on the way, and trodden under foot, rotting on the beach, or hanging up in a shop door. Provincetown is in many ways peculiar. In the first place, it is the terminus of a railroad. Consider for a moment how few places remain on this planet, having railroad communications at all, at which, when you arrive, you must get out, because you can go no farther in any direction. Then it consists mainly of one long, not very straight, but singularly narrow, street. There is another street back of this one, but it is hardly to be counted in. You come upon it unexpectedly; it is like the appendix in a book, which you are not bound to read unless you want to. The main street skirts the bay, and the backs of the houses on the water side project over the flats; and if you choose to smoke your cigar on the veranda at low water, you may see a good many articles of last year's wear and use, and smell the seemingly immortal odors of some of last year's fish, revealed by the departing tide. Before your cigar, of course, you dined, or breakfasted, or supped, and in either case you ate cod-fish. The cod-fish is a noble animal. He is served to you here fresh from his native lair, and fried in company of a thin slice of fat salt pork; and this is the orthodox, or, as a |