What's old I _can't_ revere. Hark at her! "You're a silly chick, my dear, That's quite as plain, alack! As is the piece of shell upon your back!" How bigoted! upon my back, indeed! I don't believe it's there, For I can't _see_ it; and I do declare, For all her fond deceivin', _What I can't see, I never will believe in!_] [Illustration: _The P{****}e of W{***}s to K{**}g G{****}e IV._ (_loq._). "I'll follow thee!"--MATT MORGAN, in the _Tomahawk_, 1867.] During the life-time of the venerable Cruikshank comic art in England has won the consideration due to a liberal profession, and now enjoys a fair share of reward as well as honor. He found the comic artist something of a Bohemian; he leaves him a solvent and respectable householder. He may have visited Gillray at work in the little room behind his publisher's shop; and he doubtless often enjoyed the elegant hospitality of John Leech, one of the first in his branch of art to attain the solid dignity of a front-door of his own. It is mentioned to the credit of Richard Doyle, son of HB, that when he resigned his connection with _Punch_ on account of its caricatures of Wiseman and the Pope, he gave up an income of eight hundred pounds a year. There is no worthy circle in Great Britain where the presence of a Tenniel, a Leech, a Du Maurier, a Doyle, or a Cruikshank would not be felt as an honor and their society valued as a privilege. England owes them gratitude and homage. They have not been always right, but they have nearly always meant to be. Nothing malign, nothing unpatriotic, nothing impure, nothing mean, has borne their signature; and in a vast majority of instances they have led the laughter of their countrymen so that it harmonized with humanity and truth. CHAPTER XXV. EARLY AMERICAN CARICATURE. Benjamin Franklin was the first American caricaturist. That propensity of his to use pictures whenever he desired to affect strongly the public mind was an inheritance from the period when only a very small portion of the people could read any other than pictorial language. Among the relics of his race preserved in Boston there is an illustrated handbill issued by his English uncle Benjamin, after whom he was named, which must have been a familiar object to him from the eighth year of his age. Uncle Benjamin, a London dyer when James II. fled from England, wishing to strengthen the impression made by his printed offer to "dye into colors" cloth, silk, and India calico, placed at the head of his bill a rude wood-cut of an East Indian queen taking a walk, attended by two servants, one bearing her train and the other holding over her an umbrella. At the door of his shop, too, in Princes Street, near Leicester Fields, a figure of an Indian queen appealed to the passer-by.