ry poorly equipped draughtsmen and
cheap engravers. Some, in pamphlet shape, contain nursery rhymes and
little stories, others are devoted to the alphabet and arithmetic.
Amongst them are many printed on card, shaped like the cover of a
bank-book. These were called battledores, but as Mr. Tuer has dealt with
this class in "The Horn Book" so thoroughly, it would be mere waste of
time to discuss them here.

Mr. Elkin Mathews also permitted me to run through his interesting
collection, and among them were many noted elsewhere in these pages, but
the rest, so far as the pictures are concerned, do not call for detailed
notice. They do, indeed, contain pictures of children--but mere
"factual" scenes, as a rule--without any real fun or real imagination.
Those who wish to look up early examples will find a large and
entertaining variety among "The Pearson Collection" in the National Art
Library at South Kensington Museum.

Turning to quite another class, we find "A Museum for Young Gentlemen
and Ladies" (Collins: Salisbury), a typical volume of its kind. Its
preface begins: "I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of
fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions.... The
greater part of our British youth lose their figure and grow out of
fashion by the time they are twenty-five. As soon as the natural gaiety
and amiableness of the young man wears off they have nothing left to
recommend, but _lie by_ the rest of their lives among the lumber and
refuse of their species"--a promising start for a moral lecture, which
goes on to implore those who are in the flower of their youth to "labour
at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their
bloom is gone."

The compensations for old age appear to be, according to this author, a
little knowledge of grammar, history, astronomy, geography, weights and
measures, the seven wonders of the world, burning mountains, and dying
words of great men. But its delightful text must not detain us here. A
series of "cuts" of national costumes with which it is embellished
deserves to be described in detail. _An American Man and Woman in their
proper habits_, reproduced on page 6, will give a better idea of their
style than any words. The blocks evidently date many years earlier than
the thirteenth edition here referred to, which is about 1790. Indeed,
those of the Seven Wonders are distinctly interesting.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LITTLE PRI