feelings of his age for the subjects of his pen. The most trivial domestic incident in one of Anthony Trollope's novels was a sufficient theme for a drawing astonishing for its sympathy and seriousness. By an art so simple that it eludes definition, he was able to conjure up a picture of life, minutely truthful, yet always distinguished by that spell of romance which transfigured and glorified his conceptions. We are touched by the real devotion of his lovers, by the tenderness of his women, the cares and pains of common life, and we feel their higher significance, when done thus sincerely, and lifted above all taint of vulgarity. His first design to Allingham's poems was published when he was twenty-five years old, and almost all his other illustrations were done during the next ten years. Being more sympathetic towards the world and men, he kept much more closely to the text in his illustrations than Rossetti. His imaginations followed the thought of the author faithfully and literally, while retaining an inherent spirituality which was his own. The sensitive and responsive chords in his nature enabled him to feel the situations which he drew with a vivid force, which strikes us anew with admiration every time we look at the brilliant achievements of his pen. Without effort and with perfect mastery he accomplished a miracle in almost every page he illustrated. The strength which he possessed from nature alone enabled him to abandon himself with absolute confidence to the instinct of the moment, knowing that his pen could only create the line of beauty.

The illustrator, who must, of course, follow his story, is to some extent the product of the literary taste of his time; and by their adoption of realism as the determining principle of their work, Millais and his immediate followers, Houghton, Pinwell and Walker, were in perfect sympathy with the novelists of the day, and their illustration is a sincere yet eulogistic comment upon contemporary life, outwardly and inwardly conforming to the appointments and accessories, the aspirations and ideals of the Victorian age. Millais never attempted to minimise the unshapely clumsiness of the chairs and furniture of the period, and, strange to say, their ugliness does not lessen the charm of the prints; indeed, we are confronted with an exquisite and fastidious art existing amidst the basest outward surroundings. The smoky factories, the railway stations, the grimy dwellings of the poor, the anaesthetic decorations, and all that Mr. Ruskin deplored, never deterred, or reacted upon

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Even the

the artists who worked under their shadow. illustrations of popular magazines, with their popular art, are tinged with an enthusiasm no less affecting to us than to the readers of that time. Once a Week' inaugurated the higher artistic aims in magazines of the period. The excellence of its illustrations appears to have been a matter of accident-the accident of a man of genius coming forward to draw what middle-class opinion could admire. How rarely this accident happens! A man of great gifts able to please the multitude is so uncommon that cautious people refuse to believe in him. Yet Millais's genius contributed to the popularity of Once a Week,' and incidentally conferred immortality upon its pages. For the first time in England journalistic art became distinguished-in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' in 'Good Words,' and even in obscure journals for Sunday reading, there was to be found for a brief season a wholly beautiful art. To say that every aspect of common life is the subject of these woodcuts is true, but misleading. For who, without seeing them, could realise the fascination, or the intensely emotional force presented in these everyday incidents? For instance, many of Millais's most touching scenes are laid in bedrooms, as Was it a Lie ?' in the 'Cornhill Gallery' series. The young lady in a magnificent flounced skirt, who has thrown herself down upon her bed, with her face halfburied in the pillow in shame and contrition, makes a superb picture. And that parting called 'Last Words,' where a young man, sitting at the bedside, holds the hand of a dying youth in both of his, with a rapt and awestruck face, is inexpressibly solemn and pathetic. Then, in an illustration to Orley Farm,' we see Lady Mason ' after her Confession,' sitting on a bed in a beautiful posture. She wears a very wide skirt and a shawl tightly drawn under her chin, and is a touching picture of a woman numb with cold and sorrow. Millais rarely failed to reproduce the charm of the crinoline, and in the print of Miss Dunstable,' in the Cornhill Gallery,' the great beauty and grace of the full skirt is admirably drawn, and when we look at some of his men, as in the next illustration, we even lose the vulgar contempt for whiskers.

All admirers of Arthur Boyd Houghton, the brilliant illustrator of the Arabian Nights,' are indebted to Mr. Housman* for his book of prints, and the discriminating and

* Arthur Boyd Houghton: a Selection from his Work in Black

scholarly appreciation of Houghton's genius which accompanies them. Few people will demur to Mr. Housman's judgement that, next to Millais, Houghton was the most distinguished draughtsman of his day. His original drawings at South Kensington are of consummate interest, being infinitely finer than the woodcutter's transcripts. Had he been an etcher we see how great would have been his achievement, and how great our gain. Three of the drawings exhibited are for the story of the Enchanted Horse' in the Arabian Nights.' The first design, representing the Indian who owned the magical horse prostrating himself before the King of Persia, is incomparably delicate and subtle, and presented an impossible task to the engraver. In another design imagination is swept along by the speed of the wonderful horse flying through space. The prince and princess, so lightly borne, are depicted with all the realisation of their strange position, breathing the rarefied air above the clouds, and looking down upon the misty peaks of the unenchanted world. Again there is the princess in captivity in the palace of the Sultan of Cashmere. She has been singing a song of mourning for her lover. And we are not without pity when we look at the languor and sadness of this beautiful Eastern woman, imprisoned, not in a squalid cell, but seated on the softest cushions by the side of a plashing fountain of fretted and inlaid marble. Amidst furniture of ivory and sandalwood, flowers and aromatic herbs, and gorgeous embroideries, her head droops pensively, as she dreams of flight from her golden cage. But the most casual reader of the Arabian Nights' does not grieve long for heroines in distress, as he knows that their lovers are sure to come in the disguise of a physician or otherwise, and carry them off to an endless happiness.

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Pinwell, with scarcely less distinction, drew the portraiture of his own time in a graceful and varied manner. The interior of a Paris pawnshop or a drawing-room filled with well-bred people are drawn with the same success and feeling. Frederick Walker's designs are also very numerous, and have always been popular. A few of those in the 'Cornhill Gallery' show him at his best, and are valuable memorials of his art.

and White. Printed for the most part from the original wood-blocks. With an introductory essay by Laurence Housman. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Limited.

1896.

Of the literature, already extensive, relating to the woodcuts of the sixties,' the late Mr. Gleeson White's work probably contains the most comprehensive and useful information as to the books and periodicals of the period, and the artists who illustrated them. He has discussed the subject from the collector's point of view, and his compilation appears to have been designed as a handbook for intending purchasers of the prints. There is a large amount of indiscriminate advice addressed to the new collector 'peace be with him!-but we can hardly suppose that the old collector would profit much by the well-meant hints about pasteboard boxes and brown-paper mounts, to say nothing of the ingenuous connoisseurship, which declares that the Cornhill Gallery' may one day be as valuable as the 'Liber Studiorum,' or that one of Dalziel's woodcuts after Millais is comparable to a fine etching by Rembrandt.

Absurd though such pronouncements may be, it is a question of immediate interest to try to estimate the precise value of these prints. The work of so charming and unique a phase of English art certainly ought to be preserved, and it is but an act of justice to rescue the brilliant illustrations of Millais from the unlovely surroundings of a cheap periodical, and treasure them in a portfolio. But to suggest that, when thus rescued, these hurriedly printed impressions on the cheapest paper are to be compared with an etching from the press of Rembrandt, wrought and finished from first to last by his own hand, is to throw critical judgement to the winds. Perhaps the simplest evidence of their relative merits is to be seen in the valuations of an etching by Mr. Whistler, and one of his designs engraved on the wood for 'Once a Week' or 'Good Words.' There is, and can be, no difference of opinion as to the immense superiority of the etching, direct from the master's hand.

The subtleties involved in the printing of a plate are known to every connoisseur, and its brilliancy and tone are equally affected by the quality of the paper and the ink. In the case of the Cornhill Magazine,' the plates are not woodcuts at all. The engraved blocks were electrotyped, and the impressions in the ordinary issue were printed from the metal casts a practice which was probably adopted by the proprietors of other journals. The claims of the Cornhill Gallery' are very different, and are without parallel amongst similar publications of the time. Here the publishers issued a series of 100 proofs of the woodcuts

which had appeared in the Magazine up to the year 1864, on fine paper. Being carefully printed from the unused wood blocks, the best impressions fulfil the most exacting demands of the collector, and there are probably two dozen prints of a quality which would satisfy the most fastidious eye, and would not look unworthy if compared with a few contemporary etchings of repute. Unhappily such profanities as Lord Leighton's 'Pan' and other specimens of lesser evil make the collection as a whole impossible, except for antiquarian purposes.

When Rossetti and Millais and the new school of illustrators began to draw upon the wood blocks, they endeavoured to obtain an exact reproduction of their drawings line for line, and showed little or no regard for the woodcutter, who thus became merged in the personality of the draughtsman, losing his old status and even his identity. Henceforth woodcuts became more and more imitative, causing a change in their character almost as far-reaching as when it was ascertained in the previous century that a block cut across the grain could be worked upon with the graver. Before that time all the woodcuts had been done with the knife upon blocks cut plankwise, Bewick being one of the first Englishmen who used the graver upon wood.

By this mixed technique, with its largely increased resources, there arose the means of interpreting the sentiment of a more varied and expressive form of drawing. Without the use of the graver the picture was restricted by many conventions, often charming in themselves, and capable of being turned to artistic account, but cramping and narrowing the scope of the work. And, however attractive the early woodcuts are, it must be confessed that the finer productions of the craftsmen of forty years ago rank higher in all respects than those of their predecessors. The realistic feeling of the age is seen to stir the hand of the engraver to a new power in the delineation of light and colour, to a nearer and more exact apprehension of gesture and attitude, combined with a larger knowledge and deeper human insight, conferring upon their work a sentiment above and beyond the abstract formula which was so delightfully rendered in the fifteenth century. The inward significance of corporeal shapes was now attainable by the refinements of the new technique. The lineaments of subtle emotions, the depths of misery or abasement in the lines of a face, the glance of an eye, the turn of a limb are all expressed by the dexterous stroke of graver or knife. As an