ups" who buy; therefore with no wish to be-little the advance in
nursery taste, one must own that at present its improvement is chiefly
owing to the active energies of those who give, and is only passively
tolerated by those who accept. Children awaking to the marvel that
recreates a familiar object by a few lines and blotches on a piece of
paper, are not unduly exigent. Their own primitive diagrams, like a
badly drawn Euclidean problem, satisfy their idea of studies from the
life. Their schemes of colour are limited to harmonies in crimson lake,
cobalt and gamboge, their skies are very blue, their grass arsenically
green, and their perspective as erratic as that of the Chinese.

[Illustration: "TWO CHILDREN IN THE WOOD." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAP-BOOK]

[Illustration: "SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON." FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
CHAP-BOOK]

In fact, unpopular though it may be to project such a theory, one
fancies that the real educational power of the picture-book is upon the
elders, and thus, that it undoubtedly helps to raise the standard of
domestic taste in art. But, on the other hand, whether his art is
adequately appreciated or not, what an unprejudiced and wholly
spontaneous acclaim awaits the artist who gives his best to the little
ones! They do not place his work in portfolios or locked glass cases;
they thumb it to death, surely the happiest of all fates for any printed
book. To see his volumes worn out by too eager votaries; what could an
author or artist wish for more? The extraordinary devotion to a volume
of natural history, which after generations of use has become more like
a mop-head than a book, may be seen in the reproduction of a
"monkey-book" here illustrated; this curious result being caused by
sheer affectionate thumbing of its leaves, until the dog-ears and
rumpled pages turned the cube to a globular mass, since flattened by
being packed away. So children love picture-books, not as bibliophiles
would consider wisely, but too well.

[Illustration: "AN AMERICAN MAN AND WOMAN IN THEIR PROPER HABITS."
ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER.
1790)]

To delight one of the least of these, to add a new joy to the crowded
miracles of childhood, were no less worth doing than to leave a Sistine
Chapel to astound a somewhat bored procession of tourists, or to have
written a classic that sells by thousands and is possessed unread by all
save an infinitesimal percentage of