prefixes your correspondent in England has
foolishly added the complimentary Esquire.
Under those circumstances the best thing
you could do was to look for yourself under
the head of "Esquire." Failing in unearthing
yourself, then you might try Optimus
and Terminus, and so up to Penn. When
you found yourself a number was affixed to
you. At one extremity of the apartment
was a grating, and behind that grating sat
an old gentleman in a striped dressing-gown
and a black velvet skull cap. If you
can imagine a very tame and sleepy tiger at
the Zoological Gardens, smoking a cigarito,
and with bundles of letters and newspapers,
in lieu of shin bones of beef, to eat, you may
realise the idea of that old gentleman in his
cage at the Poste Restante behind the
Puerta del Sol. You spake him kindly,
and called him "Caballero." He bowed
profoundly and returned your compliment.
Then you told him your number, and handed
your passport through the bars. He looked
at the number and he looked at the
passport. Then he kindled another cigarito;
then, in a preoccupied manner he began the
perusal of a leading article in the Epoca of
that morning. Then after a season, remembering
you, he arose, offered you a thousand
apologies, and went away out of the cage
altogether, retiring into some back den—-
whether to look for your letters, or to drink
his chocolate, or to offer his orisons to San
Jago de Compostella, is uncertain. By this
time there were generally two or three free
and independent Britons clamouring at the
bars; the Briton who threatened to write to
the Times; the Briton who declared that he
should place the whole matter in the hands
of the British ambassador; and the persistent
Briton who simply clung to the grate, or
battered at the doortrap with an umbrella,
crying, "Hi! Mossoo! Donnez-moi mon
letter. Larrup, Milk-street, Cheapside, à
Londres. Donnez-moi. Look alive, will
you!" At last the old gentleman returned,
lighted another cigarito, and began to look
for your letters. For whose letters is he
looking now, I wonder, and where?

Poste Restante! Poste Restante! It has
rested for me close to the Roman Pantheon,
and under the shadow of that blood-stained
sacrificial stone by the great Cathedral of
Mexico. Poste Restante! How many times
have I journeyed towards it with fluttering
pulse and a sinking in my throat—- how
many times have I come from it with my
pocket full of dollars, or my eyes full of
tears; tears that were sometimes of joy,
and sometimes—but not often—of sorrow.
The Poste Restante has been to me, these
many years, a smooth and a kind post, on
the whole.

CARICATURE HISTORY.

IN the last century, no one had thought of
issuing a weekly caricature with accompanying
letterpress; yet the number of pictorial
burlesques of politics and politicians, of fashions
and fashionable leaders, then published, is large;
and we know all the great men, and many of
the little men of the age, by the pencils of
political satirists, such as Hogarth at one end
of the chain, and Gillray at the other. Mr.
Thomas Wright has done the student of history
and manners some service by collecting as many
of these fugitive productions as he could lay
his hands on, and giving us an account of them
in a very interesting volume, which he entitles,
Caricature History of the Georges; or, Annals
of the House of Hanover, compiled from the
Squibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures,
Lampoons, and Pictorial Caricatures of the Time.
This volume is illustrated with engravings
copied from the old prints of bygone
generations, and in looking through it we seem to
live over again the lives of our ancestors, and
to share with them in the passions, personalities,
jealousies, intrigues, and follies of the
hour. Lord Macaulay made a collection of
Whitechapel ballads to illustrate some period
of English history. Mr. Wright has turned to
the same purpose our caricatures from the
accession of George the First to the peace of
1815.

To the proverb that "there is nothing new
under the sun," caricatures are no exception.
They have been found in Egyptian tombs; and
the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages
are sometimes adorned with extravagantly
humorous pictures, in which the object evidently
was to satirise particular persons or classes.
Caricatures became very popular in England in
the days of the Commonwealth. They used to
be engraved on playing-cards, and one of them
is extant at the present day. It is entitled,
Shuffling, Cutting, and Dealing in a Game at
Picquet. Being acted from the year 1653 to
1658. By O. P. [Oliver, Protector] and others,
with great applause. Underneath the title is
the motto, "Tempora mutantur, et nos——"
This squib was published in 1659, the year
after Oliver's death, while Richard was feebly
endeavouring to carry on the Protectorate.
The several persons represented—Cromwell
and his son, Lambert, Fleetwood, Vane,
Lenthal, Claypole, Harrison, Monk, and others,
express themselves in various pithy and suggestive
ways; and a Papist looks on with the
remark, "If you all complain, I hope I shall
win at last." Our early caricatures were mostly
manufactured in Holland, and this continued to
be the case even down to the time of the South
Sea Bubble; but after that date a vigorous race
of native satirical artists sprang up, and has
continued to the present day.