A very charming phase of book-illustration followed close upon this great black-and-white period, and it was a phase of colour. The flat wood-block process was developed by the late Edmund Evans, the colour-printer, and, encouraged by him, three gifted artists of severally distinctive styles exploited its possibilities with distinguished and popular success. Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, and Walter Crane--their very names call to mind a captivating series of picture-books in which their fancies made dainty frolic and revel for the delight equally of children and grown-ups. With all three the fairy tale and the nursery rhyme found fresh graces of pictorial expression and vivacities of invention, and the children’s picture-book entered upon a new era of artistic refinement and charm. Of the veteran Walter Crane, and his influence on the decorative side of book-illustration, one must speak presently, for happily he is represented in this volume. Of Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, what is there fresh to say in appreciation? Who has not laughed and rejoiced over Caldecott’s “John Gilpin” and his inimitable Goldsmith and Washington Irving illustrations, with their breezy humour, their happy, lively art? Is it only the middle-aged children who recall affectionately the dainty pictorial graces of Kate Greenaway’s world of little people? Anyhow, her very name has become almost established as an adjective. The sweet, tender simplicity of the colour-schemes of those books of Caldecott’s and Kate Greenaway’s had an unforgettable fragrance, and one may feel that without the influence of these artists many of the children’s books of to-day might perhaps lack something of their charm.