So we strolled to the field where the cowslips grow, And we played--and we played, for an hour or so; Then we climbed to the top of the old park wall, And the Darling she threaded a cowslip ball. Then we played again, till I said--"My Dear, This pain in my side, it has grown severe; I ought to have mentioned I'm past three-score, And I fear that I scarcely can play any more!" But the Darling she answered,-"O no! O no! You must play--you must play.--I sha'n't let you go!" --And I woke with a start and a sigh of despair, And I found myself safe in my Grandfather's-chair! TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS II. MR HUGH THOMSON In virtue of certain gentle and caressing qualities of style, Douglas Jerrold conferred on one of his contributors--Miss Eliza Meteyard--the pseudonym of "Silverpen." It is in the silver-pensive key that one would wish to write of Mr. HUGH THOMSON. There is nothing in his work of elemental strife,--of social problem,--of passion torn to tatters. He leads you by no _terribile via_,--over no "burning Marle." You cannot conceive him as the illustrator of _Paradise Lost_, of Dante's _Inferno_--even of Dore's _Wandering Jew_. But when, after turning over some dozens of his designs, you take stock of your impressions, you discover that your memory is packed with pleasant fancies. You have been among "blown fields" and "flowerful closes"; you have passed quaint roadside-inns and picturesque cottages; you are familiar with the cheery, ever-changing idyll of the highway and the bustle of animal life; with horses that really gallop, and dogs that really bark; with charming male and female figures in the most attractive old-world attire; with happy laughter and artless waggeries; with a hundred intimate details of English domesticity that are pushed just far enough back to lose the hardness of their outline in a softening haze of retrospect. There has been nothing more tragic in your travels than a sprained ankle or an interrupted affair of honour; nothing more blood-curdling than a dream of a dragoon officer knocked out of his saddle by a brickbat. Your flesh has never been made to creep: but the cockles of your heart have been warmed. Mechanically, you raise your hand to lift away your optimistic spectacles. But they are not there. The optimism is in the pictures.