_Tom Brown's School Days_, illustrated by Arthur Hughes and S. P. Hall, is one of the most notable books of the year. It is curious that at the close of the period, as at its beginning, this artist is so much to the fore, although examples of his work appear at long intervals during the years' chronicle. Yet, as 1855 shows his work in the van of the movement, so also he supplies a goodly proportion of the interesting work which is the aftermath of the sixties, rather than the premature growth of the seventies. _Tom Brown_ is too well known in its cheap editions, where the same illustrations are used, to require any detailed comment here. _Gray's Elegy_ (illustrated in colour by R. Barnes, Birket Foster, Wimperis, and others) is of little importance. [Illustration: A. BOYD HOUGHTON 'GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM GOLDEN FOUNTAINS' LOVE] [Illustration: W. SMALL 'GOLDEN THOUGHTS FROM GOLDEN FOUNTAINS' MARK THE GREY-HAIRED MAN] In 1869 _The Nobility of Life_ (Warne), an anthology, edited by L. Valentine, is attractive, less by reason of its coloured plates after J. D. Watson, C. Green, E. J. Poynter, and others, than from its headpieces, by A. Boyd Houghton (pp. 26, 106, 122, 136, 146, 178), Francis Walker (pp. 82, 170), J. Mahoney (p. 98), which, subsidiary as they appear here, are in danger of being overlooked. _Carmina Crucis_ (Bell and Daldy, 1860), poems by Dora Greenwell, has two or three decorative pieces, by G. D. L[eslie], which might be attributed to the influence of the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, if direct evidence did not antedate them by twenty years. _Miss Kilmansegg_, illustrated by Seccombe; _The Water Babies_, Sir Noel Paton and P. Skelton; _In Fairyland_, R. Doyle (Longmans); _Vikram and the Vampire_, E. Griset (Longmans), and _Æsop's Fables_ (Cassell), with one hundred clever and humorous designs, by the same artist, are among the few others that are worth naming. Several series of volumes, illustrated by various hands, may be noticed out of their due order. For the date of the first volume is often far distant from the last, and yet, as the series maintained a certain coherency, it would be confusing to spread its record over a number of years and necessitate continual reiteration of facts.