Although the 'Household Edition' of Charles Dickens's complete works was issued early in the seventies, it is illustrated almost entirely by men of the sixties, and was possibly in active preparation during that decade. Fred Barnard takes the lion's share, the largest number of drawings to the most important volumes. His fame as a Dickens illustrator might rest secure on these alone, although it is supplemented by many other character-drawings of the types created by the author of _Pickwick_. To _Sketches by Boz_ he supplies thirty-four designs, to _Nicholas Nickleby_ fifty-nine, to _Barnaby Rudge_ forty-six, to _Christmas Books_ twenty-eight, to _Dombey and Son_ sixty-four, to _David Copperfield_ sixty, to _Bleak House_ sixty-one, and to the _Tale of Two Cities_ twenty-five. 'Phiz' re-illustrates _The Pickwick Papers_ with fifty-seven designs, concerning which silence is best. J. Mahoney shows excellent work in twenty-eight drawings to _Oliver Twist_ and fifty-eight each to _Little Dorrit_ and _Our Mutual Friend_; Charles Green's thirty-nine illustrations to the _Old Curiosity Shop_ are also admirable. F. A. Fraser is responsible for thirty to _Great Expectations_, E. G. Dalziel for thirty-four to _Christmas Stories_ (from _All the Year Round_), twenty-six to the _Uncommercial Traveller_, and a few to minor pieces, issued with _Edwin Drood_, which contain S. L. Fildes's excellent designs. H. French contributes twenty to _Hard Times_, A. B. Frost illustrates _American Notes_, J. Gordon Thomson _Pictures from Italy_, and J. M'L. Ralston supplies fifteen for _A Child's History of England_. To re-embody characters already stereotyped, for the most part, by the earlier plates of the original editions, was a bold enterprise: that it did not wholly fail is greatly to its credit. It is quite possible that as large a number of readers made their first acquaintance with the _dramatis personæ_ of the novels in these popular editions as in the older books, and it would be interesting to discover what they really felt when the much-vaunted copper-plates afterwards fell under their notice. The sentiment of English people has been amply expended on the Hablot K. Browne designs. Cruikshank is still considered a great master by many people; but if one could 'depolarise' their pictures (to use Wendell Holmes's simile), and set them before their admirers free from early associations, free from the glamour of Dickens romance, and then extract a frank outspoken opinion, it would be, probably, quite opposite to that which they are now ready to maintain.