"A bad régime during ten years. All your trouble comes from that. You will soon become convalescent with a good constitution and fewer leeches."
Other methods, however, might be used effectively, each offering some special advantage of its own. For instance, the whole history of the nineteenth century might be divided, so to speak, geographically. The separate history of each nation might have been followed down in turn—the changing fortunes of England, typified by John Bull; of Russia in the guise of the bear; of the United States under the forms of the swarthy, smooth-faced Jonathan of early days, and the pleasanter Uncle Sam of recent years; and of France, typified at different times as an eagle, as a Gallic cock, as an angry goddess, and as a plump, pleasant-faced woman in a tricolored petticoat. Again, if it were desirable to emphasize the development of comic art rather than its influence in history, one might group the separate divisions of the subject around certain schools of caricature, dealing first with Gillray, Rowlandson, and their fellows among the allied Continental nations; passing thence to the caricaturists of 1830, and thence carrying the sequence through Leech, Cham, Tenniel, Nast, down to the caricaturists who in the closing years of the century developed the scope of caricature to a hitherto unparalleled extent. Still again, the history of the century in caricature might be traced along from some peculiarity, greatly exaggerated, of some great man to another personal peculiarity of some other great man: leaping from the tri-cornered hat of the Emperor Napoleon to the great nose of the Iron Duke, then on to the toupet and pear-shaped countenance of Louis Philippe, the emaciation of Abraham Lincoln, the grandpa's hat of the Harrison administration, the forehead curl of Disraeli, the collar of Gladstone, the turned-up moustaches of the Emperor William, and the prominent teeth of Mr. Roosevelt. This feature of the caricature seems important enough to justify a brief digression. It forms one of the foundation stones of the art, second only in importance to the conventionalized symbols of the different nations. From the latter the cartoonist builds up the century's history as recorded in its great events. From the former he traces that history as recorded in the personality of its great men.
The Egerean Nymph.
Paul and Virginia.
The cartoons in which these different peculiarities of personal appearance are emphasized cover the whole range of caricature, and the whole gamut of public opinion which inspired it. Here we may find every degree of malice, from the fierce goggle eyes and diabolical expression which Gillray introduced into his portraits of the hated Bonaparte down to the harmless exaggeration of the collar points by which Furniss good-naturedly satirized the appearance of Mr. Gladstone. Again, in this respect caricature varies much, because all the great men of the century did not offer to the caricaturists the same opportunities in the matter of unusual features or personal eccentricities.