If I may be personal, let me say that my first efforts in children's books were made in association with Mr. Edmund Evans. Here, again, I was fortunate to be in association with the craft of colour-printing, and I got to understand its possibilities. The books for babies, current at that time--about 1865 to 1870--of the cheaper sort called toy books were not very inspiriting. These were generally careless and unimaginative woodcuts, very casually coloured by hand, dabs of pink and emerald green being laid on across faces and frocks with a somewhat reckless aim. There was practically no choice between such as these and cheap German highly-coloured lithographs. The only attempt at decoration I remember was a set of coloured designs to nursery rhymes by Mr. H. S. Marks, which had been originally intended for cabinet panels. Bold outlines and flat tints were used. Mr. Marks has often shown his decorative sense in book illustration and printed designs in colour, but I have not been able to obtain any for this book. It was, however, the influence of some Japanese printed pictures given to me by a lieutenant in the navy, who had brought them home from there as curiosities, which I believe, though I drew inspiration from many sources, gave the real impulse to that treatment in strong outlines, and flat tints and solid blacks, which I adopted with variations in books of this kind from that time (about 1870) onwards. Since then I have had many rivals for the favour of the nursery constituency, notably my late friend Randolph Caldecott, and Miss Kate Greenaway, though in both cases their aim lies more in the direction of character study, and their work is more of a pictorial character than strictly decorative. The little preface heading from his "Bracebridge Hall" gives a good idea of Caldecott's style when his aim was chiefly decorative. Miss Greenaway is the most distinctly so perhaps in the treatment of some of her calendars. [Illustration: RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. HEADPIECE TO "BRACEBRIDGE HALL." (MACMILLAN, 1877.)] [Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY. KEY BLOCK OF TITLE-PAGE OF "MOTHER GOOSE." (ROUTLEDGE, N.D.)] [Sidenote: CHILDREN'S BOOKS.]