With a taste thus matured, his feeling for art was refined, and he directed his efforts, with ingenious skill, to render the works issued from the firm attractive. Novel methods of illustration were introduced. Wood-cuts were printed with tinted grounds and relieved lights. Chromo-lithographs vied in effect with the original water-colour drawings. A late series of reproductions of Landseer’s pictures, though designed only for a child’s book, constituted a valuable memorial of the great animal painter. Inventive ingenuity was directed to the production of fresh novelties in binding and illustration, many of which were eagerly copied by the trade. William Nelson’s appreciation of artistic excellence seemed to be innate and instinctive. “A thing of beauty” was a joy to him wholly apart from his own share in its production. His admiration for a well-got-up book, or for illustrations of unusual excellence, found as hearty utterance in reference to the publications of another firm as of his own; and hence he was always open to fresh hints, and prepared for improvement on his most successful efforts. He was, indeed, too easily beguiled by good looks both in books and men. This characteristic passage occurs in a letter to an old friend: “I had a call two days ago from a most fair-spoken English clergyman, who wanted help to build a ragged school in Sheffield. He insisted that you had introduced him to me, and that I had taken him over the works and given him a book, which was likely enough; though, as I told him, I had no recollection of it. He was most plausible, and very good-looking. A good-looking outside takes my fancy in anything. I always find myself expecting the best of a good-looking book; and I am apt to believe pleasant things of good-looking people also. He assured me he was a great friend of yours; and he had such a friendly look that I gave him what he wanted. Do you know anything of this Dr. Pike? I have had my suspicions of him that he is a plausible humbug,”--which, as in many a similar case, proved to be only too well founded.