ion of the hour or distinctly archaic. Time is a very
stringent critic, and much that passed as tolerably good taste when it
fell in with the fashion, looks hopelessly vulgar when the tide of
popularity has retreated. Miss Greenaway's work appears as refined ten
years after its "boom," as it did when it was at the flood. That in
itself is perhaps an evidence of its lasting power; for ten or a dozen
years impart a certain shabby and worn aspect that has no flavour of the
antique as a saving virtue to atone for its shortcomings.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WONDER CLOCK." BY HOWARD PYLE.
(HARPER AND BROTHERS)]

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WONDER CLOCK." BY HOWARD PYLE.
(HARPER AND BROTHERS)]

It seems almost superfluous to give a list of the principal books by
Miss Kate Greenaway, yet for the convenience of collectors the names of
the most noteworthy volumes may be set down. Those with coloured plates
are: "A, Apple Pie" (1886), "Alphabet" (1885), "Almanacs" (from 1882
yearly), "Birthday Book" (1880), "Book of Games" (1889), "A Day in a
Child's Life" (1885), "King Pepito" (1889), "Language of Flowers"
(1884), "Little Ann" (1883), "Marigold Garden" (1885), "Mavor's Spelling
Book" (1885), "Mother Goose" (1886), "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1889),
"Painting Books" (1879 and 1885), "Queen Victoria's Jubilee Garland"
(1887), "Queen of the Pirate Isle" (1886), "Under the Window" (1879).
Others with black-and-white illustrations include "Child of the
Parsonage" (1874), "Fairy Gifts" (1875), "Seven Birthdays" (1876),
"Starlight Stories" (1877), "Topo" (1878), "Dame Wiggins of Lee" (Allen,
1885), "Stories from the Eddas" (1883).

Many designs, some in colour, are to be found in volumes of _Little
Folks_, _Little Wideawake_, _Every Girl's Magazine_, _Girl's Own Paper_,
and elsewhere.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "CHILDREN'S SINGING GAMES" BY WINIFRED
SMITH (DAVID NUTT. 1894)]

The art of Miss Greenaway is part of the legend of the aesthetic craze,
and while its storks and sunflowers have faded, and some of its
eccentricities are forgotten, the quaint little pictures on Christmas
cards, in toy books, and elsewhere, are safely installed as items of the
art product of the century. Indeed, many a popular Royal Academy picture
is likely to be forgotten before the illustrations from her hand.
_Bric-a-brac_ they were, but more than that, for they gave infinite
pleasure to thousands of children of all ages,