Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/227

. It is said to have had the effect desired, and that "no man or woman was ever hanged after this for passing forged one-pound Bank of England notes."

In 1819 we have one of George Cruikshank's severe and telling 1819. attacks upon the Prince Regent, in Sales by Auction, or Provident Children disposing of their Deceased Mother's Effects for the Benefit of the Creditors (*), in which he shows us the prince knocking down (in his character of auctioneer) his dead mother's old hats, gowns, and clothing, and begging the bystanders to bid liberally. At the foot of the rostrum lie sundry snuff-boxes and pots, labelled "Queen's Mixture" and "Prince's Mixture" (in allusion to the old queen's habits), "Strasburg" (in reference to her German tastes and nationality), together with her old china tea-set.

This year is remarkable for producing perhaps the most ambitious and admirable allegory which the artist ever designed; it bears the title of Old Thirty-nine Shaking Hands with his Good Brother the Pope of Italy, or Covering Up versus Sealing the Bible. Old Thirty-nine (an English bishop) stands on a pile of volumes labelled, "Never-out-ism," "Ante-biblism," "Never-the-same-ism," etc., whilst the pope, standing on the opposite side on a mass of books bearing similar suggestive titles, shakes hands with his "good brother." By the pope's side we find the devil busily engaged in sealing up the Bible Behind him stands the Temple of Mammon, surrounded by a crowd of reverend worshippers. Two fiends standing by the side of "Old Thirty-nine" make preparations for a bonfire, to which sundry bundles labelled, "Articles of Faith," "Athanasian Creed," "Catechism," "Liturgies," "Nicene Creed," and so on, will contribute materials. Out of a building in the rear, inscribed, "National School for Thirty-niners only," issues a procession of ecclesiastics and beadles carrying banners. In the foreground stands the figure of "Divine Truth," surrounded by little children, and perusing the pages of the "Holy Bible," held for that purpose by an angel. A roughly executed affair in two compartments, Preachee and Floggee Too, satirizes certain clerical magistrates who, while preaching mercy and forgiveness in the pulpit, distinguish themselves by the seventy of