ry Pictures"
(1857), "Princess Nobody" (1884), "Mark Lemon's Fairy Tales" (1868), "A
Juvenile Calendar" (1855), "Fairy Tales from all Nations" (1849), "Snow
White and Rosy Red" (1871), Ruskin's "The King of the Golden River"
(1884), Hughes's "Scouring of the White Horse" (1859), "Jack the Giant
Killer" (1888), "Home for the Holidays" (1887), "The Whyte Fairy Book"
(1893). The three last are, of course, posthumous publications.

Still confining ourselves to the pre-Victorian period, although the
works in question were popular several decades later, we find "Sandford
and Merton" (first published in 1783, and constantly reprinted), "The
Swiss Family Robinson," the beginning of "Peter Parley's Annals," and a
vast number of other books with the same pseudonym appended, and a host
of didactic works, a large number of which contained pictures of animals
and other natural objects, more or less well drawn. But the pictures in
these are not of any great consequence, merely reflecting the average
taste of the day, and very seldom designed from a child's point of view.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "UNDINE." BY SIR JOHN TENNIEL (JAMES
BURNS. 1845)]

This very inadequate sketch of the books before 1837 is not curtailed
for want of material, but because, despite the enormous amount, very few
show attempts to please the child; to warn, to exhort, or to educate are
their chief aims. Occasionally a Bewick or an artist of real power is
met with, but the bulk is not only dull, but of small artistic value.
That the artist's name is rarely given must not be taken as a sign that
only inept draughtsmen were employed, for in works of real importance up
to and even beyond this date we often find his share ignored. After a
time the engraver claims to be considered, and by degrees the designer
is also recognised; yet for the most part illustration was looked upon
merely as "jam" to conceal the pill. The old Puritan conception of art
as vanity had something to do with this, no doubt; for adults often
demand that their children shall obey a sterner rule of life than that
which they accept themselves.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "ELLIOTT'S NURSERY RHYMES" BY W. J.
WIEGAND (NOVELLO, 1870)]

Before passing on, it is as well to summarise this preamble and to
discover how far children's books had improved when her Majesty came to
the throne. The old woodcut, rough and ill-drawn, had been succeeded by
the masterpieces of Bewick, and the re