The Story of a Feather (Bradbury, Evans, and Co. 1867), illustrated by G. Du Maurier, is a book that deserves more space than can be allowed to it. It holds a large number of drawings, some of which, especially the initial vignettes, display the marvellously fecund and dramatic invention of the artist. The Spirit of Praise (Warne, 1867) is an anthology of sacred verse, containing delightful drawings by W. Small (pp. 57, 97, 149, 189), by Paul Gray (p. 89), by G. J. Pinwell (pp. 19, 157), by A. Boyd Houghton (p. 53), and others by J. W. North and T. Dalziel.

To 1866 belongs most probably Gulliver's Travels, illustrated with eighty designs by 'the late T. Morten,' in which the ill-fated artist is seen at his best level; they display a really convincing imagination, and if, technically speaking, he has done better work elsewhere, this is his most successful sustained effort.

Moore's Irish Melodies (Mackenzie) contains many illustrations by Birket Foster, Harrison Weir, Cope, and others. Art and Song has thirty original illustrations engraved on steel, which naturally looks very out of date among its fellows. A New Table-Book by Mark Lemon (Bradbury) is illustrated by F. Eltze. Mackay's 1001 Gems of Poetry (Routledge) numbers among its illustrations at least one Millais.

Books containing designs by artists whose names appear after the title, may be noted briefly here. Little Songs for Little Folks, J. D. Watson; Æsop's Fables, with 114 drawings by Harrison Weir (Routledge); Washerwoman's Foundling, W. Small (Strahan); Lilliput Levée, J. E. Millais, G. J. Pinwell, etc. (Strahan); Roses and Holly (Nimmo); Moore's Irish Melodies, Birket Foster, H. Weir, C. W. Cope, etc. (Mackenzie); Chandos Poets: Longfellow, A. Boyd Houghton, etc. (Warne); Things for Nests (Nisbet). The popularity of the illustrator at this time provoked a critic to write: 'Book-illustration is a thriving fad. Jones fecit is the pendant of everything he does. The dearth of intellectual talent among book-illustrators is amazing. The idea is thought less of than the form. Mental growth has not kept pace with technical skill'—a passage only worth quoting because it is echoed to-day, with as little justice, by irresponsible scribblers.

In another criticism upon this year's books we find: 'For the pre-Raphaelite draughtsman and the pre-Bewick artist, who love scratchy lines without colour, blocks which look like spoilt etchings, and the first "proofs" of artists' work untouched by the engraver, nothing can be better.' It was the year of Doré's Tennyson, and Doré's Tupper, a year when the fine harvests were nearly at an end, when a new order of things was close at hand, and the advent of The Graphic should set the final seal to the work of the sixties and inaugurate a new school.

But, although the Christmas of 1866 saw the ingathering of the most fertile harvest, the next three years must be not overlooked. In 1867 Lucile, with Du Maurier's designs, carries on the record; and North Coast and other Poems, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge, 1868), nobly maintains the tradition of Dalziels. It contains fifty-three drawings: thirteen by Houghton, six by Pinwell, two by W. Small, one by J. B. Zwecker, three by J. Wolf, twenty-five by T. and three by E. Dalziel, and the engraving is at their best level, the printing unusually good.

T. MORTEN

'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS'
CASSELL

GULLIVER IN LILLIPUT