These were the only political caricatures ever published by the man whom Frenchmen regard as the greatest of their recent satirical artists. He cared nothing for politics, and had the usual attachment of artists and poets to the Established Order. Having aimed these light shafts at the flying king in mere gayety of heart, because every one else was doing the same, he soon remembered that the king was an old man, past seventy-three, as old as his own father, and flying in alarm from his home and country. He was conscience-stricken. Reading aloud one day a poem in which allusion was made to a white-haired old man going into exile with slow, reluctant steps, his voice broke, and he could scarcely utter the lines: "Pas d'outrage au vieillard qui s'exile à pas lents. C'est une piété d'épargner les ruines. Je n'enfoncerai pas la couronne d'épines Que la main du malheur met sur ses cheveux blancs." As he spoke these words the image of his old father rose vividly before his mind, and he could read no more. "I felt," said he, "as if I had been struck in the face;" and ever after he held political caricature in horror. This feeling is one with which the reader will often find himself sympathizing while examining some of the heartless and thoughtless pictures which exasperated the elderly paterfamilias who was now called to preside over demoralized France. Louis Philippe was another good-natured Louis XVIII., _minus_ divine right, _plus_ a large family. With all the domestic virtues, somewhat too anxious to push his children on in the world, a good citizen, a good patriot, an unostentatious gentleman, he was totally destitute of those picturesque and captivating qualities which adventurers and banditti often possess, but which wise and trustworthy men seldom do. In looking back now upon that eighteen years' struggle between this respectable father of a family and anarchy, it seems as if France should have rallied more loyally and more considerately round him, and given him too the privilege, so dear to elderly gentlemen, of dying in his own bed. One-tenth of his virtue and one-half his intellect had sufficed under the old _régime_.