gawky perched on the summit
of a lofty bicycle, with an enormous wheel gyrating between a couple of
spindle shanks capped with enormous crab-shells, is a sufficiently
familiar and ridiculous object in our times; but the appearance
presented by the people of 1819, who adopted the spider looking thing
called a "hobby," was so intensely comical that it gave rise to a
perfect flood of caricatures. The best of these we have personally met
with is one entitled, _The Spirit Moving the Quakers upon Worldly
Vanities_, a skit upon the Society of Friends (published by J. T.
Sidebotham). The scene is laid in front of a "Society of Friends Meeting
House," and numerous "Friends" of both sexes are busily engaged in
exercising their hobbies. In the foreground, a broad-brimmed young
"Friend" gives ardent and amorous chase to a lovely Quakeress, who,
apparently disinclined to encourage his advances, urges her steed to its
utmost speed, and makes frantic endeavours to get out of his way.

DEPRESSION IN TRADE.

The internal condition of the country this year (1819) gave cause for
much anxiety. Pecuniary distress, owing to the depression in trade, was
almost universal. This state of things, as might have been expected, was
taken advantage of by the popular agitators for their own purposes; and
the people, under their encouragement, as in the two previous years,
continued to give audible expression to their dissatisfaction at
meetings, and through the medium of publications more or less of a
seditious character. The miserable outlook gave rise (among others) to a
pair of caricatures, published by Fores on the 9th of January, _John
Bull in Clover_, and (by way of contrast), _John Bull Done Over_. In the
first, fat John is enjoying himself with his pipe and his glass; the
sleek condition of his dog shows that it shares in the comforts of its
master's prosperity. John, in fact, has what our Transatlantic cousins
call "a good time;" scattered over the floor lie invoices of goods
despatched by him to customers in Spain, in Russia, in America. Beneath
a portrait of "Good Queen Bess," John has pinned several of his
favourite ballads: "The Land we live in," "Oh, the Roast Beef of Old
England!" "May we all live the days of our life." In _John Bull Done
Over_, a very different picture is presented to our notice. The whole of
John's fat is gone; he sits, a lean, starving, tattered, shoeless object
in a bottomless chair, the embodiment of human mi