Arthur Hughes was born in London in 1832, and became a pupil of Soames of the Royal Academy Schools, exhibiting for the first time at the annual exhibition in 1854. In 1855 appeared, as we have just seen, _The Music-master_. The artist seems to have worked fitfully at illustrations, but his honourable labours in painting dispose of any charge of indolence, and, did but the scope of this work permit it, a still more interesting record of his artistic career could be made by including a list of pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Institute, the Grosvenor, the New Gallery, and elsewhere. Between 1855 and 1861 I have found no illustrations, nor does he himself recall any. In the latter year there are two designs in _The Queen_ to poems by George Mac Donald and F. Greenwood. The next magazine illustration in order is _At the Sepulchre_ in _Good Words_, 1864. In 1866 appeared an edition of Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_, with twenty-five illustrations by Arthur Hughes.' This noteworthy book is one of the essential volumes to those who make ever so small a collection of the books of the sixties. Although the work is unequal, it contains some of his most delightful drawings. In the same year _London Society_ contained _The Farewell Salutation_. In 1867 George Mac Donald's _Dealings with the Fairies_ was published. This dainty little book, which contains some very typical work, is exceptionally scarce. Another book which was published in 1868 is now very difficult to run across in its first edition, _Five Days' Entertainment at Wentworth Grange_, by F. T. Palgrave, illustrated with seventeen designs, the woodcuts (_sic_) being by J. Cooper, and a vignette engraved on steel by C. H. Jeens. [Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES 'GOOD WORDS' 1871, p. 33 THE LETTER] [Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES 'GOOD WORDS' 1871, p. 183 THE DIAL--'SUN COMES, MOON COMES'] To 1869 belongs the book with which the artist is most frequently associated, _Tom Brown's School Days_, by Tom Hughes, not a relative of the illustrator as the name might suggest. To descant on the merits of this edition to-day were foolish. When one hears of a new illustrated edition being contemplated, it seems sacrilege, and one realises how distinctly a newly illustrated _Tom Brown_ would separate the generation that knew the book through Mr. Arthur Hughes's imagination from those who will make friends with it in company with another artist. Incidents like these bring home the inevitable change of taste with passing time more vividly than far weightier matters enforce it.