seemed to lose where those two artists proved they had everything to gain from a style that passed detail swiftly, treating it suggestively. They were by nature impressionable to a different aspect of life, and in self expression they required a different method. Du Maurier's artistic creed that everything should be drawn from nature--and tables and chairs are "nature" for the artist--forced him to return again and again to accessible properties which could be fitted into his scenes. Notable among those were the big vases and the constantly reappearing ornamental gilt clock. Though drawn in black and white we are sure of its gilt, for it belongs to the Victorian period. It is to be met with in all the surviving drawing-rooms of the period--that is, it is to be met with in "Apartments." Du Maurier next furnishes a frontispiece and vignettes, which we do not admire, to Clement Scott's _Round about the Islands_ (1874). In 1882 he is at work in the field he had made his own, illustrating the story of a fad that had always amused him, illustrating the craze he had helped to create, in _Prudence: A Story of Aesthetic London_, by Lucy C. Lillie. We hope the reader of this page does not think we should have read this book. We looked at the illustrations of a muscular curate--whom we took to be the hero--making an impressive entrance into a gathering of "æsthetes," and farther on leaving the church door with "Prudence"; we read the legend to the final illustration--"It was odd to see how completely Prudence forsook her brief period of æsthetic light"--and we came to our own conclusions. The illustrations are made very small in process of printing, but du Maurier's art never lost by reduction. A picture of a Private View day in a Gallery--which at first makes one think of the Royal Academy, but in which the pictures are too well hung for that, and which is probably intended for the Grosvenor Gallery--is one of those admirable drawings of a fashionable crush with which du Maurier always excelled. In reviewing this book, however, we are already away from the most characteristic period of du Maurier's work as an illustrator of fiction. That was between 1860 and 1880. His line is altogether less intense in the next book we have to consider--Philips's _As in a Looking Glass_ (1889). The falling off between this and the book we were reviewing here but a moment ago is the most evident feature of the work before us. We have, we feel, said good-bye to the du Maurier who added so much lustre to the illustrative work of the period just preceding its publication. But in _Punch_ the vivacity of his art is still sustained; and long afterwards in _Trilby_ he scores successes again. In later years du Maurier _allowed_ in his originals for reduction, and the original cannot be rightly judged until the reduction is made. In the book under notice no reduction appears to have been made, and the drawings are consequently lacking in precision of detail.