More recently, however, French designers and printers appear to be giving attention to the subject, and newly designed types are appearing; one firm at Paris having issued a fount designed by Eugene Grasset. The charming designs of Boutet de Monvel should be named as among the most distinctive of modern French book illustrations, for their careful drawing and decorative effect, although, being in colours, they hardly belong to the same category as the works we have been considering, and the relation of type to pictures leaves something to be desired. A respect for form and style in lettering, is, I take it, one of the most unmistakable indications of a good decorative sense. A true ornamental instinct can produce a fine ornamental effect by means of a mass of good type or MS. lettering alone: and considered as accompaniments or accessories to design they are invaluable, as presenting opportunities of contrast or recurrence in mass or line to other elements in the composition. To the decorative illustrator of books they are the unit or primal element from which he starts. [Illustration: WALTER CRANE. FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] [Sidenote: ITALY.] The publication at Venice of "L'Arte della stampa nel Renascimento Italiano Venezia," by Ferd. Ongania--a series of reproductions of woodcuts, ornaments, initials, title-pages, etc., from some of the choicest of the books of the early Venetian and Florentine printers, may perhaps be taken as a sign of the growth of a similar interest in book decoration in that country, unless, like other works, it is intended chiefly for the foreign visitor. A sumptuously printed quarterly on Art, which has of late made its appearance at Rome, "Il Convito," seems to show an interest in the decorative side, and does not confine its note on illustrations to Italian work, but gives reproductions from the works of D. G. Rossetti, and from Elihu Vedder's designs to "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." Certainly if the possession of untold treasures of endlessly beautiful invention in decorative art, and the tradition of ancient schools tend to foster and to stimulate original effort, one would think that it should be easier for Italian artists than those of other countries to revive something of the former decorative beauty of the work of her printers and designers in the days of Aldus and Ratdolt, of the Bellini and Botticelli. It does not appear to be enough, however, to possess the seed merely; or else one might say that where a museum is, there will the creative art spring also; it is necessary to have the soil also; to plough and sow, and then to possess our souls in patience a long while ere the new crop appears, and ere it ripens and falls to our sickle. It is only another way of saying, that art is the outcome of life, not of death.