The satire and burlesque of the Jeffersonian period, from 1798 to 1809, were abundant in quantity, if not of shining excellence. To the reader of the present day all savors of burlesque in the political utterances of that time, so preposterously violent were partisans on both sides. It is impossible to take a serious view of the case of an editor who could make it a matter of boasting that he had opposed the Republican measures for eight years "without a single exception." The press, indeed, had then no independent life; it was the minion and slave of party. It is only in our own day that the press begins to exist for its own sake, and descant with reasonable freedom on topics other than the Importance of Early Rising and the Customs of the Chinese. The reader would neither be edified nor amused by seeing Mr. Jefferson kneeling before a stumpy pillar labeled "Altar of Gallic Despotism," upon which are Paine's "Age of Reason" and the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, with the demon of the French Revolution crouching behind it, and the American eagle soaring aloft, bearing in its talons the Constitution and the independence of the United States. Pictures of that nature, of great size, crowded with objects, emblems, and sentences--an elaborate blending of burlesque, allegory, and enigma--were so much valued by that generation that some of them were engraved upon copper. On the day of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States, March 4th, 1801, a parody appeared in the _Centinel_ of Boston, a Federalist paper of great note in its time, which may serve our purpose here: Monumental Inscription. "_That life is long which answers Life's great end._" Yesterday expired, deeply regretted by millions of grateful Americans, and by all good men, THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES: animated by A WASHINGTON, AN ADAMS, A HAMILTON, KNOX, PICKERING, WOLCOTT, M'HENRY, MARSHALL, STODDERT, AND DEXTER. Æt. 12 years. Its death was occasioned by the secret arts and open violence of foreign and domestic demagogues: Notwithstanding its whole life was devoted to the performance of every duty to promote the Union, Credit, Peace, Prosperity, Honor, and Felicity of its Country. At its birth, it found the Union of the States dissolving like a rope of snow; It hath left it stronger than the threefold cord. It found the United States bankrupts in estate and reputation; It hath left them unbounded in credit, and respected throughout the world. It found the Treasuries of the United States and Individual States empty; It hath left them full and overflowing. It found all the evidences of public debts worthless as rags; It hath left them more valuable than gold and silver.