James Gillray, though the favorite caricaturist of London before the beginning of our century, did not reach the full development of his talent until the later extravagancies of Napoleon Bonaparte gave him subjects so richly suggestive of burlesque. Even at this late day, when we have it in our power to know the infinite mischief done to our race by such perjured charlatans as Bonaparte, it is difficult to read some of his bulletins and messages without bursts of laughter--the imitation of known models is so childish, and they reveal so preposterous an ignorance of every thing that the ruler of a civilized country ought to know. After giving London a long series of caricatures of the French Revolution and of the English fermentation that followed it, Gillray fell upon Napoleon, and exhibited the ludicrous aspects of the man and his doings with a comic fertility and effectiveness rarely equaled. True, he knew very little either of the Revolution or of Bonaparte--England knew little--but while all well-informed and humane persons have forgiven the excesses of the Revolutionary period, or laid the blame at the door of the real culprits, the world is coming round to the view of Napoleon Bonaparte which the caricaturist gave seventy years ago. If I were asked to name the best five caricatures produced since Hogarth, one of the five would be James Gillray's "Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker drawing out a New Batch of Kings;" and another, a picture by the same artist, "King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver" ridiculing Napoleon's scheme of invading England in 1803. Both are masterpieces of satiric art in what we may justly style the English style; _i. e._, the style which amuses every body and wounds nobody, not even the person satirized. [Illustration: Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker, drawing out a New Batch of Kings. His Man, Hopping Talley, mixing up the Dough. (Gillray, 1806.)] Born in 1757, when Hogarth had still seven years to live, the son of a valiant English soldier who left an arm in Flanders, James Gillray belongs more to the old school of caricaturists than to the new. Many of his works could not now be exhibited; nor was Gillray superior in moral feeling to the time in which he lived. He flattered the pride and the prejudices of John Bull. In a deep-drinking age, his own habits were excessively convivial; were such as to shorten his life, after having impaired his reason. He was, nevertheless, for a period of twenty years the favorite caricaturist of his country, and a very large number of his works are in all respects admirable. The reader will remark that Gillray, like most of his countrymen, was not acquainted with the countenance of Napoleon, and could, therefore, only give the popularly accepted portrait. His likenesses generally are excellent.