The actual circumstance to which the foregoing sketch refers is related to us by the commander of the _Bellerophon_:--
"At daybreak on the 24th of July, we were close off Dartmouth. Count Bertrand went into the cabin and informed Bonaparte of it, who came upon deck about half-past four, and remained on the poop until the ship anchored in Torbay. He talked with admiration of the coast, saying, 'You have in that respect a great advantage over France, which is surrounded by rocks and dangers.' On opening Torbay, he was much struck with the beauty of the scenery, and exclaimed, 'What a beautiful country! It very, very much resembles the bay of Porto Ferrago, in Elba.'"[72]
The same year, and on the same subject, the artist gives us _Boney's Meditations on the Island of St. Helena, or the Devil addressing the Sun_, in which the idea is manifestly borrowed from a design by James Gillray; _The Corsican's Last Trip under the Guidance of his Good Angel_ [the devil]; _The Genius of France Expounding her Laws to the Sublime People_; and a very admirable and original design, _The Pedigree of Corporal Violet_; all of which are etched from the designs of other artists.
Hardly was Napoleon despatched to the island prison which was so shortly to prove his grave, and replaced by the unwieldly Louis, than the latter came in for his full share of satire. In another of George Cruikshank's caricatures of the same year, he shows us _The Royal Laundress_ [Louis the Eighteenth] _Washing Boney's Court Dresses_, Napoleon watching the process the while from St. Helena. "Ha, ha!" he laughs, "such an old woman as _you_ might rub a long while before they'll be all white, for they are tri-coloured in _grain_." Another shows us fat Louis climbing the _mât de cocagne_ (soaped pole) and clutching the crown of France; he clambers up on the shoulders of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, his immediate supporter being England. Napoleon watches his progress from across the sea; "_I_ climbed up," he says, "twice, without _any_ help." Other subjects of the year are: _Friends in Need_, and _John's Dream, or the Prince and Old England for Ever!_
1816. AVERSION OF THE REGENT TO RETRENCHMENT.