Bunbury's caricatures commence as early as his foreign tour, though some of the best refer to his later military life in England; especially to the time when he was in camp at Coxheath, during the troubled days of the American War. For we have now left far behind the days of Swift and Bolingbroke and Oxford, of Marlborough's battles, and of the great political settlement which marked the Hanoverian succession. Dettingen and Fontenoy are now old soldiers' tales, and the invasion of England by Charles Stuart, the younger Pretender--in which connection we may remember Hogarth's print of the march of the Guards to Finchley--lies equally behind us: we have passed through the long Ministry of Walpole and that of the elder Pitt, we have seen the war with France, and been stirred by Wolfe's victory and heroic death upon the Heights of Abraham. In a word, we have turned the corner with the year of our artist's birth, and are going downwards into the latter half of the eighteenth century. George III. has now taken his father's place upon the throne of England: the Tories have returned again to be a power in political life as in the days of Bolingbroke, and against the "King's friends," the party subservient to Court influence, there appears in the nation a very strong democratic movement with John Wilkes as its leader and idol. Meanwhile the fatal policy of Grenville had led to the alienation of the great American colonies, and the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 brought a complete rupture. But this phase of politics enters but little into our present subject. It is of more interest to inquire, apart from this complex turbulent world of home or foreign politics, what were the people themselves in their home life, their outdoor life, their tastes, aspirations, sympathies, social surroundings? I think we shall get an answer to some of these questions--an answer none the less valuable because it comes to us indirectly--from the study of Henry William Bunbury's social caricatures. These appear to commence with (or are in some special cases even earlier than) his Grand Tour. The delightful "Courier Francois"--published by Bretherton at 134 New Bond St.--belongs surely to this period; and Thomas Wright, in his valuable "History of Caricature,"[5] seems to bear this out when he says of Bunbury that his earlier prints were etched and sold by James Bretherton, who published also the works of James Sayer--an artist whom we shall meet in our next chapter. In this print the "Courier" cracks a long whip as he covers the ground, mounted upon a steed almost as long, as tough and wiry-looking as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the legend, _Poste Royale_, with the three _fleur-de-lys_. Our Courier belongs evidently to the _ancien regime_, and might indeed have