less marked hostility to the reigning
house.

The famous Westminster election of the same year (1784) brought
Rowlandson still further into political satire, in which Charles James
Fox and the beautiful Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, are leading
figures. In "The Devonshire, or the most approved manner of securing
votes," the lovely duchess is bestowing a warm embrace on a voter, in
the shape of a fat butcher, while another lady, perhaps the Duchess of
Gordon, looks on approvingly with the words "Huzza! Fox for ever!" In
the "Lords of the Bedchamber," Georgina, seated in her _boudoir_
beneath Reynolds' portrait of her duke, is entertaining to tea two
privileged visitors, Fox and his leading supporter, Sam House--"brave,
bald-headed Sam" as he was then called. The enthusiastic support which
her Grace gave to Fox's candidature gave an opening which was
used--often too freely--by the caricaturists. In "Wit's last stake, or
the Cobbler's vote," she is seated upon Fox's knee, the while a cobbler
puts a stitch into her shoe, so that she may have the excuse of pouring
a handful of guineas into his wife's hand. In another print she appears
neglecting the infant heir of the Cavendishes for a fox, dressed up in
baby clothes; and upon Fox's triumphant return is made by the artist to
carry him pick-a-back, and to stop at Mungo's Hotel for a drop of gin.

It is but fair to our Caricaturist to say that the fair Pittite
champion, Lady Buckingham, is treated no less mercilessly; and that,
even while he was aiming the most outrageous shafts of ridicule and
innuendo at the Duchess, his pencil did justice to her extraordinary
beauty and charm, both in the prints above mentioned, and in a
"Procession to the Hustings after a successful Canvass," in which she
leads the way in a big picture hat, and carrying a perfectly
indescribable ensign with "The Man of the People" as its legend.
Finally, "The Westminster Mendicant" and the "Westminster Deserter
drummed out" complete this really brilliant series of election
caricatures, of which I have only detailed the most interesting. In the
last-named print it is "brave baldheaded" Sam House who beats the drum,
while on his left is the triumphant candidate, Charles James Fox, who
addresses the crowd with the time-hallowed words, "Friends and fellow
citizens, I cannot find words to express my feelings, etc.," and on his
right the defeated Sir Cecil Wray; while behind are the Irish chairmen
who had