Such is this earliest of political caricatures--and in this case it was purely political--but the question of religion soon began not only to mix itself up with the political question, but almost to absorb it, as we have seen in the review of the history of caricature under the Reformation. Before this period, indeed, political caricature was only an affair between crowned heads, or between kings and their nobles, but the religious agitation had originated a vast social movement, which brought into play popular feelings and passions: these gave caricature a totally new value. Its power was greatest on the middle and lower classes of society, that is, on the people, the _tiers état_, which was now thrown prominently forward. The new social theory is proclaimed in a print, of which a fac-simile will be found in the "Musée de la Caricature," by E. J. Jaime, and which, from the style and costume, appears to be German. The three orders, the church, the lord of the land, and the people, represented respectively by a bishop, a knight, and a cultivator, stand upon the globe in an honourable equality, each receiving direct from heaven the emblems or implements of his duties. To the bishop is delivered his bible, to the husbandman his mattock, and to the knight the sword with which he is to protect and defend the others. This print--see cut No. 172--which bears the title, in Latin, "Quis te prætulit?" (Who chose thee?) belongs probably to the earlier half of the sixteenth century. A painting in the Hôtel de Ville of Aix, in Provence, represents the same subject much more satirically, intending to delineate the three orders as they were, and not as they ought to be. The divine hand is letting down from heaven an immense frame in the form of a heart, in which is a picture representing a king kneeling before the cross, intimating that the civil power was to be subordinate to the ecclesiastical. The three orders are represented by a cardinal, a noble, and a peasant, the latter of whom is bending under the burthen of the heart, the whole of which is thrown upon his shoulders, while the cardinal and the noble, the latter dressed in the fashionable attire of the court minions of the day, are placing one hand to the heart on each side, in a manner which shows that they support none of the weight.