The art of the wood-engraver was already suffering through competition with those mechanical processes of reproduction by which it is now almost entirely destroyed. And it soon became evident that the more careful work we were trying to present could not compete in popular acceptance with those rougher and readier methods which, by reason of their greater economy, were already widely employed. And yet it must always be, I think, a matter for regret that this beautiful art of the wood-engraver should be doomed to annihilation. I have tried to show in a separate chapter how great a part it played in that renaissance of Art in England which is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement, and I am proud to think that some of the best of its later examples found their way into the _English Illustrated Magazine_ during the period of my editorship. On the literary side the Magazine could boast, during those earlier years, of contributions from men already famous, or who have since won their way to fame. Among the poets, Meredith and Swinburne were repeated contributors to its pages; and from a throng of distinguished writers in various fields I may cite the names of Professor Huxley, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Bret Harte, Lawrence Oliphant, Stanley Weyman, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and Richard Jefferies. It was during the progress, through the pages of the Magazine, of his captivating story, _The House of the Wolf_, that Weyman asked my judgment on a little play he had written, and I wrote him in response a long letter pointing out what I thought to be its defects, and setting forth the reasons why, as I believed, it could scarcely, as it stood, be expected to achieve a success on the stage. Mr. Weyman was at that time only on the threshold of his reputation as a novelist, and I remember that my sister--who was reading for me some of the many proffered contributions to the Magazine--most strongly urged me very carefully to consider the claims of _The House of the Wolf_. A swift perusal of the story left me in no doubt as to its merits, and its warm acceptance at the hands of the readers of the Magazine amply confirmed my judgment; and yet it is strange, as illustrating how widely divergent opinions may be on matters of taste, that the story, on nearing its conclusion, was submitted to the publishers’ reader, with the idea of its being issued by them in book form, and that his unfavourable judgment left Messrs. Macmillan with no alternative but to decline the volume.