by a dull encylopaedia of fact.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE WHITE SWANS" BY ALICE HAVERS (_By
permission of Mr. Albert Hildesheimer_)]

Therefore, except so far as the work of certain illustrators, hereafter
noticed, touches this period, we may leave it; not because it is
unworthy of most serious attention, for in Sir John Gilbert, Birket
Foster, Harrison Weir, and the rest, we have men to reckon with whenever
a chronicle of English illustration is in question, but only because
they did not often feel disposed to make their work merely amusing. In
saying this it is not suggested that they should have tried to be always
humorous or archaic, still less to bring down their talent to the
supposed level of a child; but only to record the fact that they did
not. For instance, Sir John Gilbert's spirited compositions to a "Boy's
Book of Ballads" (Bell and Daldy) as you see them mixed with other of
the master's work in the reference scrap-books of the publishers, do not
at once separate themselves from the rest as "juvenile" pictures.

Nor as we approach the year 1855 (of the "Music Master"), and 1857 (when
the famous edition of Tennyson's Poems began a series of superbly
illustrated books), do we find any immediate change in the illustration
of children's books. The solitary example of Sir Edward Burne-Jones's
efforts in this direction, in the frontispiece and title-page to
Maclaren's "The Fairy Family" (Longmans, 1857), does not affect this
statement. But soon after, as the school of Walker and Pinwell became
popular, there is a change in books of all sorts, and Millais and Arthur
Hughes, two of the three illustrators of the notable "Music Master,"
come into our list of children's artists. At this point the attempt to
weave a chronicle of children's books somewhat in the date of their
publication must give way to a desultory notice of the most prominent
illustrators. For we have come to the beginning of to-day rather than
the end of yesterday, and can regard the "sixties" onwards as part of
the present.

It is true that the Millais of the wonderful designs to "The Parables"
more often drew pictures of children than of children's pet themes, but
all the same they are entirely lovable, and appeal equally to children
of all ages. But his work in this field is scanty; nearly all will be
found in "Little Songs for me to Sing" (Cassell), or in "Lilliput Levee"
(1867), and these latter had appeared previously in _Good