owy glade or fell ravine, either with glint of lake
or the glad, long course of some rejoicing stream, and above all, supreme
in a beauty all its own, he spreads a canopy of peerless sky, or a
wilderness, perhaps, of angry storm, or peaceful stretches of soft,
fleecy cloud, or heavens serene and fair--another kingdom to his teeming
art, after the earth has rendered all her gifts.

Paul Gustave Dore was born in the city of Strasburg, January 10, 1833. Of
his boyhood we have no very particular account. At eleven years of age,
however, he essayed his first artistic creation--a set' of lithographs,
published in his native city. The following year found him in Paris,
entered as a 7. student at the Charlemagne Lyceum. His first actual work
began in 1848, when his fine series of sketches, the "Labors of
Hercules," was given to the public through the medium of an illustrated,
journal with which he was for a long time connected as designer. In 1856
were published the illustrations for Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques" and
those for "The Wandering Jew "--the first humorous and grotesque in the
highest degree--indeed, showing a perfect abandonment to fancy; the other
weird and supernatural, with fierce battles, shipwrecks, turbulent mobs,
and nature in her most forbidding and terrible aspects. Every incident or
suggestion that could possibly make the story more effective, or add to
the horror of the scenes was seized upon and portrayed with wonderful
power. These at once gave the young designer a great reputation, which
was still more enhanced by his subsequent works.

With all his love for nature and his power of interpreting her in her
varying moods, Dore was a dreamer, and many of his finest achievements
were in the realm of the imagination. But he was at home in the actual
world also, as witness his designs for "Atala," "London--a Pilgrimage,"
and many of the scenes in "Don Quixote."

When account is taken of the variety of his designs, and the fact
considered that in almost every task he attempted none had ventured
before him, the amount of work he accomplished is fairly incredible. To
enumerate the immense tasks he undertook--some single volumes alone
containing hundreds of illustrations--will give some faint idea of his
industry. Besides those already mentioned are Montaigne, Dante, the
Bible, Milton, Rabelais, Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," "The Ancient
Mariner," Shakespeare, "Legende de Croquemitaine," La Fontaine's "Fables