portance; the other names include the engraver Paul Revere (chiefly
famous for a picturesque exploit in the War of Independence); a
Scotsman, William Charles; the Englishmen, Matt Morgan and E.P.
Bellew; and the Germans, Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler.

The name of Thomas Nast overshadows and sums up American political
caricature. Nast, who was born in Bavaria in 1840, was brought to
America at the age of six; and his training and all his interests were
strongly American. At fourteen he was an illustrator on _Leslie's
Weekly_, and was sent at twenty to England to illustrate the famous
Sayers-Heenan prize-fight. He then went as recorder of Garibaldi's
campaign of 1860. He returned to America known only as an illustrator.
The Civil War did not awaken his latent genius till 1864, when he
published a cartoon of fierce irony against the political party which
opposed Lincoln's re-election and advocated peace measures with the
Southern confederacy. This cartoon not only made Nast famous, but may
be said to contain the germ of American caricature; for all that had
gone before was too crude in technique to pass muster even as good
caricature.

The magnificent corruption of Tammany Hall under the leadership of
William M. Tweed, the first of the great municipal "bosses," gave Nast
a subject worth attacking. Siegfried, earnest but light-hearted, armed
with the mightier sword of the pen of ridicule, assailed the monster
ensconced in his treasure-cave, and after a long battle won a
brilliant victory. Nast did not always rely on a mere picture to carry
his thrust; often his cartoon consisted of only a minor figure or two
looking at a large placard on which a long and poignantly-worded
attack was delivered in cold type. At other times the most ingenious
pictorial subtlety was displayed. This long series sounds almost the
whole gamut of caricature, from downright ridicule to the most lofty
denunciation. A very happy device was the representation of Tweed's
face by a money-bag with only dollar marks for features, a device
which, strangely enough, made a curiously faithful likeness of the
"boodle"-loving despot. When, finally, Tweed took to flight, to escape
imprisonment, he was recognized and caught, it is said, entirely
through the wide familiarity given to his image in Nast's cartoons.

When Nast retired from _Harper's Weekly_, he was succeeded by Charles
Green B