reprinted in
"The Cornhill Gallery" (Smith and Elder, 1865). These are most notable
works, even when measured by the standard of their contemporaries. The
same magazine contains two other works from his pen, one illustrating a
poem, "The great God Pan," by Mrs. Browning, and another illustrating a
story by Mrs. Sartoris, entitled "A Week in a French Country House."
These, and the nine compositions in the "Bible Gallery" (the pictures
from which have lately been re-issued in a popular form by the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge) exhaust the list of those which can
be traced. As four of the magnificent designs are reproduced here, it
would be superfluous to describe them; the titles of the five others
are: _Abram and the Angel_, _Eliezer and Rebekah_, _Death of the First
Born_, _The Spies' Escape_, and _Samson at the Mill_.

One of the original drawings on wood is now on view at the South
Kensington Museum, and, by comparison with impressions from the engraved
blocks, we see how small has been the loss in translation, so admirably
has the artist mastered the limitation of the technique that was to
represent his work in another medium. The reproductions here given are
considerably reduced, and necessarily lose something, but they retain
enough to prove that had the artist cared to rest his reputation upon
such works, he might have done so with a light heart, for whenever the
golden period of English illustration is recalled, these comparatively
few drawings will inevitably be recalled with it.

A photographic silver-print from a drawing which forms the frontispiece
to a little book of fairy tales is of hardly sufficient
importance--charming though its original must have been--to be included
among the book illustrations. The drawing, _A Contrast_, reproduced at
p. 72, is undated; the idea it is intended to suggest, a model who once
stood for some youthful god, revisiting the adolescent portrait of
himself when old age has him gripped fast with rheumatism and failing
vigour.

To-day, when one has heard sculptors claim that Lord Leighton's finest
work was in their own craft, one has also heard many illustrators not
merely extol these drawings--notably the Bible subjects--as his
masterpieces, but jealously refuse to consider him entitled to serious
regard as an artist in any other medium. This attitude, so curiously
unlike the usual welcome from experts which awaits an artist who
ventures into fresh mediums for ex