In France the general movement has proceeded upon lines on the whole very similar. Process—especially what was called “Gillotage”—was adopted earlier, and used at first with greater liberality than in England, although wood-engraving has persisted effectively even up to our own time. In the various types of periodicals of which the Revue Illustrée, Figaro Illustré and Gil Blas Illustré may be taken as examples, the most noticeable feature is a use of colour-printing, which is far in advance of anything generally attempted in Great Britain. A favourite and effective process is that employed for the reproduction of chalk drawings (as by Steinlen), which consists of the application of a surface-tint of colour from a metal plate to a print from an ordinary process block.

In Germany, Jugend, Simplicissimus, and other publications devoted to humour and caricature, employ colour-printing to a great extent with success. The organ of the artists of the younger German schools, Pan (1895), makes use of every means of illustration, and has especially cultivated lithography and wood-cuts, using these arts effectively but with some eccentricity. Holland has also employed coloured lithography for a remarkable series of children’s books illustrated by van Hoytema and others. The Viennese Kunst und Kunsthandwerk is an art publication which is exceptionally well produced and printed.

Illustration in the United States has some few characteristics which differentiate it from that of other countries. The later school of fine wood-engraving is even yet in existence. American artists also introduced an effective use of the process block, namely, the engraving or working over of the whole or certain portions of it by hand. This is generally done by an engraver, but in certain cases it has been the work of the original draughtsman, and its possibilities have been foreseen by him in making his drawing. The only other variant of note is the use of half-tone blocks superimposed for various colours.

(E. F. S.)


ILLUSTRES, the Latin name given to the highest magistrates of the later Roman Empire. The designation was at first informal, and not strictly differentiated from other marks of honour. From the time of Valentinian I. it became an official title of the consuls, the chief praefecti or ministers, and of the commanders-in-chief of the army. Its usage was eventually extended to lower grades of the imperial service, and to pensionaries from the order of the spectabiles. The Illustres were privileged to be tried in criminal cases by none but the emperor or his deputy, and to delegate procuratores to represent them in the courts.

See O. Hirschfeld in Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie (1901), p. 594 sqq.; and T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 1892), i. 603-617.


ILLYRIA, a name applied to part of the Balkan Peninsula extending along the eastern shore of the Adriatic from Fiume to Durazzo, and inland as far as the Danube and the Servian Morava. This region comprises the modern provinces or states of Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro, with the southern half of Croatia-Slavonia, part of western Servia, the sanjak of Novibazar, and the extreme north of Albania. As the inhabitants of Illyria never attained complete political unity its landward boundaries were never clearly defined. Indeed, the very name seems originally to have been an ethnological rather than a geographical term; the older Greek historians usually wrote of “the Illyrians” (οἰ Ἰλλυρίοι), while the names Illyris (Ἰλλυρίς) or less commonly Illyria (Ἰλλυρία) came subsequently to be used of the indeterminate area inhabited by the Illyrian tribes, i.e. a region extending eastward from the Adriatic between Liburnia on the N. and Epirus on the S., and gradually shading off into the territories of kindred peoples towards Thrace. The Latin name Illyricum was not, unless at a very early period, synonymous with Illyria; it also may originally have signified the land inhabited by the Illyrians, but it became a political expression, and was applied to various divisions of the Roman Empire, the boundaries of which were frequently changed and often included an area far larger than Illyria properly so called. Vienna and Athens at different times formed part of Illyricum, but no geographer would ever have included these cities in Illyria.