Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/115

 into the shade. At the end, however, of his engagement, feeling that he was incapable of meeting Kean on anything like equal terms, he set sail for America.

The appearance of Edmund Kean and Lucius Junius Booth at Drury Lane is referred to in a satire entitled, The Rival Richards, published by S. W. Fores in 1817. The sketch (evidently the work of an amateur) shows us Folly seated on an ass, holding in one hand a pair of scales, in one of which stands Booth, and in the other Edmund Kean. To the mind of the satirist there appears to be no difference in the abilities of the two performers, as the scales exactly balance. On the right, the portico of Covent Garden is overshadowed by the inelegant but massive proportions of Drury Lane; the intervening space being occupied by various figures and details, among which is a "patent clapping machine." An advertisement board carried by one of the figures clearly shows that the satire—an elaborate idea badly worked out—has reference to the period when both actors were engaged at "old Drury."

Undoubtedly the most important event of the year 1818 was the congress of the allied sovereigns at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the evacuation of France which followed. By the second treaty of Paris, the stay of the occupying armies had been fixed at a period of five years; but by an official note, dated the 4th of November, 1818, the ministers of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia, referring to the engagements entered into by the French Government with the subscribing powers to that treaty, stated that such Government had fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and proposed, "with respect to those clauses, the fulfilment of which was reserved for more remote periods, arrangements which were satisfactory" to the contracting parties. Under these circumstances the sovereigns resolved that the military occupation of France should forthwith be discontinued.

On the 7th of November, the Duke of Wellington, commander-in-chief of the army of occupation, issued an order of the day, taking leave of the troops under his command, which concluded in the following terms:—