lusions to important historical incidents. The
chap-book form of publication is well adapted for the preservation of
half-discredited beliefs, of charms and prophecies, incantations and
cures.

In "Valentine and Orson," of which a fragment is extant of a version
printed by Wynkyn de Worde, we have unquestionably the real fairy story.
This class of story, however, was not addressed directly to children
until within the last hundred years. That many of the cuts used in these
chap-books afterwards found their way into little coarsely printed
duodecimos of eight or sixteen pages designed for children is no doubt a
fact. Indeed the wanderings of these blocks, and the various uses to
which they were applied, is far too vast a theme to touch upon here. For
this peripatetic habit of old wood-cuts was not even confined to the
land of their production; after doing duty in one country, they were
ready for fresh service in another. Often in the chap-books we meet with
the same block as an illustration of totally different scenes.

[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF "THE PATHS OF LEARNING" (HARRIS AND SON.
1820)]

[Illustration: PAGE FROM "THE PATHS OF LEARNING" (HARRIS AND SON. 1820)]

The cut for the title-page of Robin Hood is a fair example of its kind.
The Norfolk gentleman's "Last Will and Testament" turns out to be a
rambling rhymed version of the Two Children in the Wood. In the first of
its illustrations we see the dying parents commending their babes to the
cruel world. The next is a subject taken from these lines:

"Away then went these prity babes rejoycing at that tide,
Rejoycing with a merry mind they should on cock-horse ride."

And in the last, here reproduced, we see them when

"Their prity lips with blackberries were all besmeared and dyed,
And when they saw the darksome night, they sat them down and cried."

But here it is more probable that it was the tragedy which attracted
readers, as the _Police News_ attracts to-day, and that it became a
child's favourite by the accident of the robins burying the babes.

The example from the "History of Sir Richard Whittington" needs no
comment.

A very condensed version of "Robinson Crusoe" has blocks of distinct, if
archaic, interest. The three here given show a certain sense of
decorative treatment (probably the result of the artist's inability to
be realistic), which is distinctly amusing. One might select hundreds of
woodcuts of this type, but those here