is staring into vacancy amid the gigantic scarabs, the great goddess Pasht, and other familiar objects of the corridor leading to the Refreshment-room in the great Bloomsbury building, which people of Grub Street hurry through daily, with downcast eyes, to enjoy the frugal dainties that a beneficent institution permits them to take by way of sustenance during the intervals of study in the Reading-room. Another plate, _Scene of the Plague in London_, 1665, by Charles Keene, would hardly tempt one to linger before it, but for its signature. It is a powerful bit of work, but does not show the hand of the great _Punch_ artist at its best. The rest of the contributions to this volume are by C. Rossiter, F. Smallfield, Viscount Bury, Lord G. Fitzgerald, J. W. Oakes, A. J. Lewis, F. Powell, J. Sleigh, H. C. Whaite, Walter Severn, and W. Gale. Two by J. Clark deserve mention. To find the painter of cottage-life, with all his Dutch realistic detail, in company with Mr. Whistler, is a curious instance of extremes meeting. Without wishing to press the argument unduly, it is evident that etching which afterwards developed so bravely, and left so many fine examples, exerted also a secondary influence on the illustration of the sixties. Hence the somewhat extended reference to the few books which employed it largely for illustrations. Those who would have you believe that the great English masters of illustration failed to obtain contemporary appreciation should note the three editions of this work as one fact, among a score of others, which fails to support their theory. Whether from a desire to extol the past or not, it is certain that those publishers who have been established more than a quarter of a century claim to have sold far larger editions of their high-priced illustrated volumes then than any moderately truthful publisher or editor would dare to claim for similar ventures to-day. Of course there were fewer books of the sort issued, and the rivalry of illustrated journalism was infinitely less; still the people of the fifties, sixties, and seventies paid their tribute in gold freely and lavishly, and if they offered the last insult of the populace--popularity--to these undoubted works of art, it prevents one placing artists of the period among the noble army of martyrs. Their payment was quite equal to that which is the average to-day, as a file-copy of one of the important magazines shows. They were reproduced as well as the means available permitted; the printing and the general 'get-up' of the books, allowing for the different ideals which obtained then, was not inferior to the average to-day, and, as a rule, the authorship of the drawings was duly acknowledged in the table of contents, and the artists 'starred' in contemporary advertisements. It is painful to own that even the new appreciation is not absolutely without precedent. One notable instance of depreciation cannot be forgotten. Mr. Ruskin, who never expressed admiration of