he relied on as the chief supporters of the j such as these were the actors in the sanProtestant party, and it is sufficiently obvi-guinary scene at Weinsperg, so often spoous that it was now the purpose of that ken of as an instance of unexampled feroparty to sacrifice the pure religious princi- city, in which, after the place had been ples of the Reformation to the success of taken by storm, several noblemen were put the political movement to which it had to death by a cruel, but not then an uncomgiven rise. mon military punishment. It appears, We cannot, without danger of wearying however, that this was the act of a small our readers, attempt to follow Dr. Zimmer- party, and performed without the knowman in his narrative of the tedious and de- ledge or consent of the majority. We may sultory course of the Peasant War. The add, also, that after the final defeat of the body of insurgents, of which the peasants of peasants, the fate of Count Helfenstein and Stuhlingen formed the nucleus, was after- his companions was avenged by the slow wards known as the Hegau and Black Fo-roasting to death of those who had been rest Troop; and, besides this, we hear of concerned in it. The victims were attached separate troops of East Franconia, of to a tree, round which the fire was made, Rothenburg, of the Odenwald, of Hohen- by a chain long enough to permit them to lohe, of the Upper and Lower Rhine, of the Upper Tauber, and others, whose mere names would fill a page. The general policy pursued by their antagonists was to affect to negotiate, until they could find a favorable opportunity to fall on and crush them; and it was not till after repeated experience of the treachery of the princes and nobles, that the peasants were induced to try their strength with them in open conflict, or retaliate the slaughter of their comrades by the burning of castles. The abbeys and convents were, in many instances, attacked and destroyed without any such motive; but in these cases the impelling cause was evidently religious fanaticism, and there is no mention of cruelty towards the inmates. During their brief hour of triumph, the peasants, or probably a few men of education and sagacity who had joined them, formed a project for the consolidation and general reform of the German empire, in many points strikingly resembling that which is now taking place; and it is worthy of remark that their plan, though democratic in its tendencies, is perfectly free from the rashness and insane violence that would have been inevitable had the charges brought against them been well founded. leap about in their agony, so as to protract it to the utmost possible length, and this exploit was performed by knights and noblemen of high rank with their own hands. Most painful is it to find the voice of Luther raised against the unfortunate people, in fierce and unmeasured vituperation, and urging on the vengeance of foes who needed no such stimulant. Overlooking the fact that the great body of the peasants were innocent of the outrage at Weinsperg, and irritated by the certainly unfounded accusation of the Catholics, of his having been in some measure himself the occasion of this and other excesses, he declares that henceforth the peasants have no claim to mercy, and (in his letter "Against the murderous and robber hordes of Boors") he calls on all who can "to stab them, cut them down, and dash their brains out as if they were mad dogs." They deserve themselves, he says, to be counted among the insurgents who shall have mercy on those "upon whom God will not have mercy, but whom he will punish and destroy." It has been urged that Luther was compelled to act thus, lest the Reformation should be involved in the consequences of the unsuccessful revolt; a poor excuse at best, and to this argument another may be opposed of greater force. Gradually, however, as the hopes by which the insurgents had originally been animated faded away, when the failure of "Had Luther," says Dr. Zimmerman, " acceptthe premature and ill-judged attempt of ed the consequences of his own principles, had Francis von Sickingen, the death of Ulrich he not taken a one-sided view of the Reformavon Hutten, and most of all the entire de- tion, but remained the man of the people, and sertion of the leading Protestants, deprived placed himself at the head of the movement on them of all chance of the co-operation of which, in the first instance, he had not looked the middle classes, the insurrection assumed without satisfaction, he would have carried with him thousands who were hesitating between the a darker and fiercer aspect, and men of alto-people and their oppressors; the Germans might, gether different character and purposes began to take a prominent part in it. Of even then, have become a nation, united in faith and political freedom; and the civil and religious dissensions, the strife, the calamity, and misery of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centu ries, and the countless evils of a hydra-headed despotism have been avoided." The effects of this desertion of the popular cause by its natural leaders was no less fatal to the cause of religion than to that of political freedom, by involving the Protestants in a thousand contradictions, and by leading to the same habits of equivocation, and encouraging the very spirit of persecution and intolerance, which formed their most prominent accusations against the church of Rome. From the New Monthly Magazine. HISTORY ILLUSTRATED BY CARICATURE. England under the House of Hanover; its History and Condition during the Reigns of the three Georges, illustrated from the Caricatures and Satires of the Day. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M. A., F. S. A., &c., with numerous illustrations, executed by F. W. Fairholt. PICTORIAL and written satires, are the most harmless and at the same time, the most effective weapons of opposition. Seeking simply to bring out the faults and foibles of a question, a principle, or a fashion, in a ridiculous point of view: a satire, however pointed or bitter, has little of the asperity and invective of direct argument. Appealing also at once to the eye, it often brings home truth to idlers who have not zeal to search for it elsewhere-hence its influence often in deciding questions even of primary importance. Caricature is a word of Italian origin, but the application of so homely, and yet so potent a means of persuasion to politics, dates from the remotest times. Caricatures and songs have been found in Egyptian tombs, and Mr. Wright particularly points out that the song and the lampoon were the constant attendant on, and medium of invective in, those incessant political struggles which, during the middle ages, were preparing for the formation of modern society; and many an old manuscript and sculptured block, whether of wood or stone, shows that our forefathers in the middle ages understood well the permanent force of pictorial satire. It was at once a new and promising idea to illustrate a given period of modern history by materials entirely derived from such sources. Nor in selecting such a period could a more happy choice have been made by Mr. Wright than that of the reigns of the first three Georges. It is the period at which the House of Brunswick was established on the throne of England, upon the ruin of Jacobitism, by the overthrow of the political creed of despotism, as also that when the same dynasty and its throne were defended against the encroachments of that fearful food of republicanism which burst out from a neighboring kingdom, and thus gained the victory over democracy. These are to us interesting periods, because in them originated all those distinctions of political parties and that peculiar spirit of constitutional antagonism which exist at the present day. It was during these periods that the great political parties of Tories and Whigs came into play, and it was in the political warfare brought about by this antagonism of parties that caricatures not only chiefly flourished, but appear almost to have had their origin as a national art; for Mr. Wright informs us that previous to the Revolution of 1688 caricatures were chiefly executed by Dutch artists, and that the majority of such were imported from Holland. The antipathy, however, that existed between the two opposing parties, which sprang from that revolution was of the bitterest description. Each endeavored to render its opponents odious to the public by personal abuse and calumny, and this animosity even extended to the pulpit. A Tory paper of the 12th of November, 1715, reported that, "On Monday last the Presbyterian minister at Epsom broke his leg, which was so miserably shattered, that it was cut off the next day. This is a great token, that those pretenders to sanctity do not walk so circumspectly as they give out." The first regular political mob was a High Church mob, stirred up for the purpose of raising a clamor against the Whigs, and headed by the notorious Dr. Henry This was of course aimed at the ex-lord treasurer, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, one of whose creatures, a Scot, named Gregg, had been engaged in some unpatriotic intrigues during the late ministry. The widow and orphan were Mary of Modena and the Pretender. The warmingpan, as we shall afterwards see, referred to the supposititious birth of the Pretender. Sacheverell. The Sacheverell pictures and encouragement and protection, he has his master's songs were plentiful, but they appear to have magic wand and borrowed golden angel. The been pointless and complicated. One cop-Boulter, without Temple Bar." mollo, Pour la veuve et l'orphelin. Sold by A. per-plate, for example, had crown, mitre, Bible and Common Prayer, " as supported by the truly evangelical and apostolical, truly monarchical and episcopal, truly legal and canonical, or truly Church of England fourteen," who had supported Sacheverell through his trial. The Sacheverell caricatures were also exceedingly numerous, but equally pointless and void of humor. One engraved by Mr. Wright from Mr. Hawkins's collection, represents the doctor in the act of writing his sermon, prompted on one side by the Pope, and on the other by the Devil. The retort of the other party was somewhat better. They made a nearly exact copy of the caricature of the doctor, with a bishop mitred in the place of the Pope, and the Devil flying away in terror at the doctor's sermon. In the virulent partyism of the times all kinds of articles were made the means of conveying caricatures; we find them on seals for letters, on buttons for people's coats, and even on tobacco-stoppers, as somewhat later they appeared on playing cards, and on ladies' fans. What is more absurd is that one design was sometimes adapted to the two sides of the question. Thus Mr. Wright instances the case of a medal having on one side the head of the preacher surrounded by the words H. H. Sach, D. D., while the inscription on the reverse is Firm to thee, surrounding on some copies of the medal a mitre, and on others the head of the Pope, thus being calculated to suit all parties. The exultation of the Whig party on the accession of George I. soon manifested itself in numerous lampoons and satirical writings, not very remarkable either for their wit or brilliancy. Apparently the first caricature published in this reign contained "The traytor's coat of arms, curiously engraved on a copper-plate; the crest of a Welshman stripped of his grandeur, playing upon a hornpipe, to lull his senses under his misfortunes; an earl's coronet, filled with French flower-de-luces, and tipt with French gold; the Pretender's head in the middle. The coat, three toads in a black field; the three toads are the old French coat of arms being in reverse, denotes treason in perfection. The supporters are a French popish priest in his habit, with a warming-pan upon his shoulder, and a penknife in his left hand, ready to execute what the Popish religion dictates upon Protestants: on the other side, a Scots Highlander-some call him Gregg; a pack upon his back, and a letter in his hand, betraying the kingdom's safety; for his The conduct of Anne's Tory ministry was soon also arraigned in political romances and tales. Such were the "Secret History of the White Staff," by De Foe, and the different pamphlets in answer to it and in defence of it, in which the character of the Lord Treasurer Oxford was very freely discussed, and others of the same class. The discomfited Tories, who were not generally backward in taking up the pen, or deficient in able men to use it, were at first entirely confounded by the sudden One of and unexpected course of events. the first lampoons upon the Whigs came from the pen of the scurrilous publican poet, Ned Ward, upon the occasion of the triumphant return of Marlborough. The Tories, however, reckoned most upon the mob to embarrass the government, and such a multitude of low libels and seditious papers were hawked about the streets, that in November (1714), the lord mayor was compelled to seize upon many of the ven dors and throw them into the house of correction. After the flight of Bolingbroke and Ormond to France, the name of the latter, as the only one of the late ministers who enjoyed much popularity, was substituted for that of Sacheverell in the cries of the mob, and the head of Duke Ormond figured as an ornament where the doctor's had done before. From that time, the doctor lost his importance; and within a few years, at the time when Hogarth drew his series of the "Harlot's Progress," Sacheverell's portrait was looked upon as a fit companion for that of the no less notorious Captain Mackheath. Mr. Wright looks upon the following Mr. C. Roach Smith from the mouth of a song, which was taken down in 1841 by fishmonger in the Isle of Wight, as one of the most curious relics of English Jacobite literature he has met with. "I am Ormond the brave, did you ever hear of me? | parents; and a bowl of milk and an orange You call me Jemmy Butler, but I am Ormond the Brave! "Between Ormond and Marlbro' there rose a great Says Ormond to Marlbro', 'I was born a duke, "Oh !' says Marlbro', ' now do not say so; duel.' 'Begone, then,' says Ormond, 'You cowardly traitor! But I was Queen Anne's darling, and old Eng- And for the crown of England so boldly I did fight.' are on the table below. Also a still more curious satirical medal, from Mr. Haggard's collection, in which Father Petre is pushing the child up through the roof of a chest or cupboard, while Truth is exposing the emblematically crushing a serpent at the trickery by holding the door open, and same time. Amid the political excitement during the Jacobite times, even the taverns and public-houses of the metropolis took a character of partizanship, and some, under the name of Mug-Houses, became the resort of small societies or clubs of political parti zans. Two count of these London mug-houses. Mr. Wright gives an amusing_acof those which were most distinguished in the riots of 1715 and 1716 as strongholds of the Whigs, were the Roebuck, in Cheapside, where the "Loyal Society" held its meetings, and a mug-house in Long Acre. The Tory ale-houses appear to have stood chiefly about Holborn Hill (Dr. Sacheverell's parish) and Ludgate Street. The Whig societies who frequented the mughouses began in the autumn of 1715 to unite in parties to fight the Jacobite mob which had so long tyrannized over the streets. mitted outrages on Ludgate Hill, broke the windows that were illuminated, scattered a bonfire, and cried out An Ormond! &c., but they were dispersed and soundly thrashed by a party of the tender in effigy." From this time we shall find Loyal Society, who had lately burnt the Prethe new self-constituted police constantly at war with the mob. At the end of October and beginning of Novemtogether. The Prince of Wales's birth-day, the ber, a number of political anniversaries crowded 30th of October, was celebrated on Monday the It was chiefly by songs that the minds of these tumults, informs us that "A parcel of the 31st. The Flying Post, the chief chronicler of the lower classes were to have been prepar-Jacobite rabble, such as Bridewell boys, &c., comed to join in a general rising in favor of the exiled house of Stuart. The Whigs replied by casting ridicule and contempt upon the son of James II., whom they insisted on looking upon as a mere impostor. The common story was that the Pretender was the child of a miller, and that, when newly born, he had been conveyed into the of King William to be burnt on the anniversary of The latter had prepared an effigy Queen's bed by means of a warming-pan; that monarch's birth, Friday, November 4, and on and this contrivance having been ascribed the approach of night they assembled round a to the ingenuity of Father Petre, the large bonfire in the Old Jury for that purpose. Whigs always spoke of the Pretender by ried to a party of the Loyal Society, who were But information of their design having been car. the name of Perkin, or little Peter. Hence met at the Roebuck to celebrate King William's it was that the warming-pan figures so birth-day, and who were therefore close at hand, much in the satirical literature of the day. these gentlemen hastened to the spot, and “gave Mr. Wright gives one of the caricatures the Jacks due chastisement with oaken plants, deillustrative of this period. The Queen is molished their bonfire, and brought off the effigies represented sitting by the cradle, while her in triumph to the Roebuck." On the morrow, the Jesuit adviser whispers in her ear with his 5th of November, the Whig mob had their celehand placed in a more than familiar man- the Pope, the Pretender, Ormond, Bolingbroke, bration. They had prepared caricature effigies of ner over her neck. The infant has a child's and the Earl of Marr, which were carried in the windmill to mark the trade of its real following order :-"First two men bearing each a warming pan, with the representation of the in- The Political State of Great Britain" gives a fant Pretender, a nurse attending him with a suck-list of these bubbles in July amounting to a huning-bottle, and another playing with him by beat-dred and four, among which are companies" for ing the warming. pan." These were followed by assurance of seamen's wages;" "for a wheel for three trumpeters, playing "Lilliburlero" and other perpetual motion ;" "for improving gardens ;"" for Whig tunes. Then came a cart with Ormond and insuring and increasing children's fortunes;" "for Marr, appropriately dressed. This was followed making looking glasses;" "for improving malt by another cart, containing the Pope and Pretender liquors" for breeding and providing for bastard seated together, and Bolingbroke as the secretary children" (the first idea of the foundling hospital); of the latter. They were all drawn backwards, and "for insuring against thefts and robberies." with halters round their necks. The procession, Among other projects were companies" for plantthus arranged, passed from the Roebuck along ing of mulberry trees and breeding of silkworms Cheapside, through Newgate Street, and up Hol- in Chelsea Park" "for importing a number of born Hill, where the Jacobite bells of St. Andrew's large jackasses from Spain, in order to propagate Church were made to ring a merry peal. From a larger breed of mules in England;"" for fattenthence they passed through Lincoln's-Inn-Fields ing of hogs." A clergyman proposed a company and Covent Garden to St. James's, where they to discover the land of Ophir, and monopolize the made a stand before the palace; and so went back by Pall Mall and the Strand, through St. Paul's Churchyard, into Cheapside: but here they found that the "Jack" had been beforehand with them, and stolen the fagots which had been piled up for their bonfire. They therefore made a circuit of the city, whilst a new bonfire was prepared, and on their return burnt all the effigies amid the shouts of the crowd. gold and silver which that country was believed still to produce. It would be almost impossible here to carry the ridiculous beyond what was represented in matter of fact; but there were some burlesque lists, containing companies for curing the gout," "for insuring marriages against divorce," and the like. The fault of the caricatures of the peThe enmity between the mob and the riod, both political and in reference to the Loyal Society was embittered by these first" bubbles," was the same. They were too encounters, and it soon came to a fierce is complex and elaborate. It is set forth in On the 17th of November one of the the advertisement of a caricature, called mob was killed in an assault upon the Roe-" The World in Masquerade," as a strong buck, and serious tumults and faction fights recommendation that it was "represented occurred at intervals during 1716, till the in nigh eighty figures.' sue. 20th of July, when a desperate attack was Political playing cards had been first pubmade upon the same house, in which, al-lished on the occasion of the Popish plot though the ringleader was killed, the lower part of the house was gutted, and the mob was only dispersed by the arrival of the magistrates and soldiers. in the time of Charles II. New issues came forth on the occasion of these South Sea bubbles, of which Mr. Wright gives a detailed account. The wise measures of The next great subject for caricature and Walpole gradually alleviated the evils which satire was the South Sea Bubble. Jacobite the South Sea affair had afflicted on society, fights, the alarming increase of highway and although the spirits of the Jacobites robberies, even in the streets of London, rose in 1720, at the birth of a young Prethe unremitting warfare of High Church tender, and Bishop Atterbury got up a Jaand Low Church, and Colley Cibber's cobite plot in 1722, its failure was so sig"non-juror" were all forgotten in the ex-nal that the government of King George traordinary social convulsion that followed gained daily in strength. The ministers, upon Law's Mississippi scheme and its Eng-strong in their parliamentary majorities, lish imitation-the South Sea Company. paid little heed to the clamor of the oppoThe infatuation with which people entered sition; trade went on flourishing, and the upon this rash project was perfectly aston- Pretend r was no longer in a position to ishing. It was in vain that Sir Robert give alarm. For several years afterwards Walpole and a few other able men, as well the bitterness of party feeling appears to as all the Tory papers, ridiculed the pro-have cast itself chiefly into the ranks of ject. Stock-jobbing became the sole busi- literature and science. ness of all classes, and Whigs, and Tories, This opens a new subject, which Mr. and Jacobites, and High Church and Low Wright treats of with his usual accuracy Church, and Dissenters, forgot their mu- detail and completeness of purpose. The tual animosity in the general infatuation. first kings of the Hanoverian dynasty had Minor stock-jobbing companies sprang up no love for letters, and those authors only like mushrooms around the large govern- could live by their writings who would ment-scheme :throw themselves into the troubled sea of of |