It is possible that, as time goes on, some other quarter of Paris will take the place of Montmartre, as the nursery of young free-lances, and will inspire future Bohemians to other great deeds in the world of art. Mayhap the honoured quarter will be “Montparnasse,” or the vicinity of the “Luxembourg;” or perhaps it will be the “Butte de Chaumont,”--the other great cliff of Paris, surrounded in this instance with a romantic park, and peopled with a toiling, excitable, working population,--that will attract the next group of illustrators of modern city life. However that may be, Paris supplies a never-failing succession of highly talented artists who, as they leave the schools, different as their methods may be, group themselves around some chosen neighbourhood, some _cabaret_, some master of the art, or some illustrated periodical. Already there is a brilliant group of yet younger illustrators risen in Paris, since the advent of those with whom this volume deals. The fact that most of the papers in which these illustrations appear are unknown to, or unpalatable to, the British public, renders it certain that, with but few exceptions, the accomplished work of these modern masters of black and white art will never be as widely appreciated in England as it deserves to be. And this is one more justification of the writer’s long-urged plea that in London we are sadly in need of a National Water Colour and Black and White Gallery, for which the best obtainable examples of such work could be procured by gift or purchase, and thereafter exhibited. Stowed away in drawers and cupboards at the British Museum, at the National Gallery, and probably at South Kensington Museum and elsewhere--visible only in driblets, after regulated application, is untold wealth of beautiful drawings which should rightly be _displayed_ on the walls of such a gallery as is suggested. Beautiful examples of work by living illustrators, both British and foreign, could be obtained for a comparatively nominal sum, and would exemplify a powerful and fascinating development of modern art; which meets the requirements of the day, in its own line, as fully as did the work of those early Italian masters in _their_ time, which the nation’s art buyers collect so assiduously and at so much cost. But such a gallery would be incomplete were it to pass by without example the strength of Steinlen, the dainty elegance of Wély or Morin, Huard’s types of provincialism, Forain’s delicacy of design, or the humorous observation of Caran d’Ache. To be complete and cosmopolitan it must chronicle within its walls something of that defiance of convention, that exuberance of youthful audacity, seeking ever fresh paths within the unexplored--above all, that single-minded devotion to art for its own sake which belongs to these Illustrators of Montmartre. [Illustration: A. WILLETTE] Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh Transcriber’s Notes