The more you study the position of illustrators during the last forty years, the more you are inclined to believe that they owe their very existence, as a class, to the popularity of magazines and periodicals. From the time _Once a Week_ started, to the present to-day, the bulk of illustrations of any merit have been issued in serial publications. It is easy to find a reason for this. The heavy cost of the drawings, and, until recent times, the almost equally heavy cost of engraving them, would suffice to prohibit their lavish use in ordinary books. For it must not be forgotten that every new book is, to a great extent, a speculation; whereas the circulation of a periodical, once it is assured, varies but slightly. A book may be prepared for twenty thousand buyers, and not attract one thousand; but a periodical that sold twenty thousand of its current number is fairly certain to sell eighteen thousand to nineteen thousand of the next, and more probably will show a slight increase. Again, although one appears to get as many costly illustrations in a magazine to-day as in a volume costing ten times the price, the comparative sales more than readjust the balance. For a quarter of a million, although a record circulation of a periodical, is by no means a unique one; whereas the most popular illustrated book ever issued--and _Trilby_ could be easily proved to merit that title--is probably not far beyond its hundred thousand. This very book was published in _Harper's Magazine_, and so obtained an enormous advertisement in one of the most widely circulated shilling monthlies. One doubts if the most popular illustrated volumes published at one or two guineas would show an average sale of two thousand copies at the original price. Therefore, to regard the periodical, be it quarterly, monthly, or weekly--and quite soon the daily paper may be added to the list--as the legitimate field for the illustrator, is merely to accept the facts of the case. True, that here and there carefully prepared volumes, with all the added luxury of fine paper and fine printing, stand above the magazine of their time in this mechanical production. But things are rapidly changing. One may pick up some ephemeral paper to-day, to find it has process-blocks of better quality, and is better printed, than 'the art book of the season,' be it what it may. The illustrator is the really popular artist of the period--the natural product of the newer conditions. For one painter who makes a living entirely by pictures, there are dozens who subsist upon illustrating; while, against one picture of any reputable sort--framed and sold--it would be impossible to estimate the number of drawings made specially for publication. Nor even to-day--when either the demand for illustration is ahead of the supply, or else many editors artfully prefer the second best, not forgetting all the feeble stuff of the cheap weeklies--would it be safe to declare that