I have often been asked how a book ought to be illustrated, and I wish now to answer that question to the best of my artistic ability. When a tradesman, a plumber for instance, is asked by a foolish proprietor how many pipes he ought to lay on to his new property, it would not be unnatural if even the honestest of that mysterious craft were to reply, 'As many as you can afford, sir; the more the better!' Perhaps I ought to go on that safe rule also; but as a foolish artist, with a rigid sense of propriety, I must sink my own interest and regard the book only as something outside myself. My opinion is, that if a book is to be illustrated with more than a frontispiece and vignette, it ought to be illustrated thoroughly throughout. It ought to be an _édition de luxe_, or else a book with only a frontispiece and vignette. I think that every book bound in cloth ought to have a frontispiece at least; if possible, also a vignette for the title-page. When I publish a book I always try to persuade my publishers to go to this expense. If it is a novel of a sensational or exciting nature it does not require any more. The tasteful reader, when he takes up a book, likes to be introduced to it with a well-drawn, finely-executed frontispiece; he naturally looks at that first because it opens first to him. He lingers for a space over that frontispiece, and is either attracted or repelled by it. If it is a bald, commonplace group of figures, without action or sentiment, something that he is in the habit of seeing on every hand, if he is artistic or romantic he will be indebted to that frontispiece; for, taking that as an index to the character of the work, if he does not want commonplace, he will lay it down respectfully and seek out some other amusement. If the frontispiece has been drawn by a sympathetic artist, the interest of the reader is touched straight off and he turns next to the title-page. Here he may find something to linger over, a dreamy vignette _à la_ Turner, or an artistic commonplace which may suit his purpose. I prefer, as a book collector and a member of the Ex-Libris Society, a vignette either quaint and unique, or else one dreamy, soft, and suggestive, something of the style of the best editions of Sir Walter Scott, or of the old world of art, such as Walter Crane can give us, or a delicious Birket Foster, a Turner, or a Bewick; something which will tempt us, providing the binding is good enough, to paste our book-plate inside the cover and put it tenderly among the other kind friends of our solitude on our shelves, _after_ we have read it--something, in fact, which may tempt us to order from the publishers a special copy bound in morocco, so that we may honour the artist who has delighted our eyes, as Esther did Ahasuerus.