and if they do not rise
up and call her blessed, they retain a very warm memory of one who gave
them so much innocent pleasure.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "UNDINE" BY HEYWOOD SUMNER (CHAPMAN AND
HALL)]

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE RED FAIRY BOOK" BY L. SPEED
(LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 1895)]

Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, beginning as they do with "Undine"
(1845), already mentioned, include others in volumes for young people
that need not be quoted. But with his designs for "Alice in Wonderland"
(Macmillan, 1866), and "Through the Looking Glass" (1872), we touch
_the_ two most notable children's books of the century. To say less
would be inadequate and to say more needless. For every one knows the
incomparable inventions which "Lewis Carroll" imagined and Sir John
Tenniel depicted. They are veritable classics, of which, as it is too
late to praise them, no more need be said.

Certain coloured picture books by J. E. Rogers were greeted with
extravagant eulogy at the time they appeared "in the seventies." "Worthy
to be hung at the Academy beside the best pictures of Millais or
Sandys," one fatuous critic observed. Looking over their pages again, it
seems strange that their very weak drawing and crude colour could have
satisfied people familiar with Mr. Walter Crane's masterly work in a not
dissimiliar style. "Ridicula Rediviva" and "Mores Ridiculi" (both
Macmillan), were illustrations of nursery rhymes. To "The Fairy Book"
(1870), a selection of old stories re-told by the author of "John
Halifax," Mr. Rogers contributed many full pages in colour, and also to
Mr. F. C. Burnand's "Present Pastimes of Merrie England" (1872). They
are interesting as documents, but not as art; for their lack of academic
knowledge is not counterbalanced by peculiar "feeling" or ingenious
conceit. They are merely attempts to do again what Mr. H. S. Marks had
done better previously. It seems ungrateful to condemn books that but
for renewed acquaintance might have kept the glamour of the past; and
yet, realising how much feeble effort has been praised since it was
"only for children," it is impossible to keep silence when the truth is
so evident.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "KATAWAMPUS" BY ARCHIE MACGREGOR (DAVID
NUTT)]

Alfred Crowquill most probably contributed all the pictures to "Robinson
Crusoe," "Blue Beard," and "Red Riding Hood" told in rhyme by F. W. N.
Bayley, which have been noticed among his books of th