_Lays of the Holy Land_ (Nisbet, 1858), clad in binding of a really fine design adapted from Persian sources, is another illustrated quarto, with one drawing at least--_The Finding of Moses_--by J. E. Millais, which makes it worth keeping; a 'decorative' _Song of Bethlehem_, by J. R. Clayton, is ahead of its time in style; the rest by Gilbert, Birket Foster, and others are mostly up to their best average. The title-page says 'from photographs and drawings,' but as every block is attributed to an artist, the former were without doubt redrawn and the source not acknowledged--a habit of draughtsmen which is not obsolete to-day. [Illustration: J. R. CLAYTON BARRY CORNWALL'S 'DRAMATIC SCENES' 1857 OLYMPIA AND BIANCA] [Illustration: J. E. MILLAIS 'HOME AFFECTIONS FROM THE POETS,' 1858 THERE'S NAE LUCK ABOUT THE HOUSE] [Illustration: J. E. MILLAIS 'HOME AFFECTIONS FROM THE POETS,' 1858 THE BORDER WIDOW] Perhaps the most important illustrated volume of the next year is _The Home Affections [portrayed] by the Poets_, by Charles Mackay (Routledge, 1858), which continues the type of quarto gilt-edged toned paper table-books so frequent at this time. Its illustrations are a hundred in number, all engraved by Dalziels. Its artists include Birket Foster, John Gilbert, J. R. Clayton, Harrison Weir, T. B. Dalziel, S. Read, John Abner, F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, with many others, 'and' (as play-bills have it) J. Everett Millais, A.R.A. _There's nae Luck about the House_ (p. 245) and _The Border Widow_ (p. 359) are curiously unlike in motive as well as handling; the one, with all its charm, is of the Mulready school, the other intense and passionate, highly wrought in the pre-Raphaelite manner. Yet after the Millais' all the other illustrations in the book seem poor. A landscape by Harrison Weir (p. 193), _Lenore_, by A. Madot (p. 159), a very typical Tenniel, _Fair Ines_ (p. 135), _Oriana_ (p. 115), _Hero and Leander_ (p. 91), _The Hermit_ (p. 67), and _Good-night in the Porch_ (p. 195), by Pickersgill, claim a word of appreciation as one turns over its pages anew. Whether too many copies were printed, or those issued were better preserved by their owners than usual, no book is more common in good condition to-day than this. Another book of the same size, with contents less varied, it is true, but of almost the same level of excellence, is _Wordsworth's Selected Poems_ (Routledge, 1859), illustrated by Birket Foster, J. Wolf, and John Gilbert. This contains the hundred finely engraved blocks by the brothers Dalziel, some of them of the first rank, which was the conventional equipment of a gift-book at that time.