About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be correct) a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up journals of their own:--_La Caricature_, first published once a week; and the _Charivari_ afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also appears daily. At first the caricatures inserted in the _Charivari_ were chiefly political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the State and M. Philipon’s little army in the Galerie Véro-Dodat. Half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the monarchy, on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the _clypei septemplicis_ with the poisonous shifts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they _did_ tell, it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and served almost to annihilate the adversary.