During the Commune the walls of Paris were again covered with drawings and lithographs of the character which Frenchmen produce after long periods of repression: Louis Napoleon crucified between the two thieves, Bismarck and King William; Thiers in the pillory covered and surrounded with opprobrious inscriptions; Thiers, Favre, and M'Mahon placidly looking down from a luxurious upper room upon a slain mother and child ghastly with blood and wounds; landlords, lean and hungry, begging for bread, while fat and rosy laborers bask idly in the sun; little boy Paris smashing his playthings (Trochu, Gambetta, and Rochefort) and crying for the moon; "Paris eating a general a day;" Queen Victoria in consternation trying to stamp out the horrid centipede, _International_, while "Monsieur John Boule, Esquire," stands near with the habeas-corpus act in his hand; naked France pressing Rochefort to her bosom; and hundreds more, describable and indescribable. [Illustration: Gavarni.] It remains to give a specimen of recent French caricature of another kind. Once more, after so many proofs of its impolicy, the Government of France attempts to suppress such political caricature as is not agreeable to it, while freely permitting the publication of pictures flagrantly indecent. At no former period, not even in Voltaire's time, could the French press have been more carefully hedged about with laws tending to destroy its power to do good, and increase its power to do harm. The Government treats the press very much after the manner of those astute parents who forbid their children to see a comedy of Robertson or a play of Shakspeare, but make it up to them by giving them tickets to the variety show. A writer familiar with the subject gives us some astounding details: