The animosities of national hatred have been a fertile source of these vehicles of popular feeling--which discover themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibit one another under the most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of the French in the seventeenth century are numerous. The _badauds_ of Paris amused themselves for their losses by giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had obtained: seven or eight Spaniards are seen seated around a large turnip, with their frizzled mustachios, their hats _en pot-a-beurre_; their long rapiers, with their pummels down to their feet, and their points up to their shoulders; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and pieces of garlick stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in as great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We have largely participated in the vindictive spirit which these grotesque emblems keep up among the people; they mark the secret feelings of national pride. The Greeks despised foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be slaves;[103] the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small territory, would be masters of the world: the Italians placed a line of demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by their mountains. The Spaniards once imagined that the conferences of God with Moses on Mount Sinai were in the Spanish language. If a Japanese become the friend of a foreigner, he is considered as committing treason to his emperor, and rejected as a false brother in a country which, we are told, is figuratively called _Tenka_, or the Kingdom under the Heavens. John Bullism is not peculiar to Englishmen; and patriotism is a noble virtue when it secures our independence without depriving us of our humanity. The civil wars of the League in France, and those in England under Charles the First, bear the most striking resemblance; and in examining the revolutionary scenes exhibited by the graver in the famous _Satire Menippee_, we discover the foreign artist revelling in the _caricature_ of his ludicrous and severe exhibition; and in that other revolutionary period of _La Fronde_, there was a mania for _political songs_; the curious have formed them into collections; and we not only have "the Rump Songs" of Charles the First's times, but have repeated this kind of evidence of the public feeling at many subsequent periods.[104] _Caricatures_ and _political songs_ might with us furnish a new sort of history; and perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some particular events not to be found in more grave authorities. FOOTNOTES: