AT REST. _Pen and ink_ 148 FROM BREYDENBACH'S TRAVELS 150 ST. CHRISTOPHER. _From 'A Treatise on Wood-Engraving,' page 46_ 153 HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN MARY. _From 'A Treatise on Wood-Engraving,' page 72_ 154 ALBERT DÜRER'S APOCALYPSE 156 BY CHRISTOPHER JEGHER, AFTER RUBENS 158 A PANEL OF BLACK AND GOLD 176 INITIAL LETTER O, AND MOONLIGHT 196 THE AVENUE--HOBBEMA 229 HARMONY. _A night effect_ 250 ART SUBJECTS 272 A GARDEN SCENE 297 THE ANCIENT NILE 300 _Note A._--John Foster, of Coldstream, is one of the most accomplished of photographic artists, who has made a specialty of cattle groups, and whose studies are nearly always perfect in their grouping and effect. _Note B._--Major W. Aikenhead, of the Launceston Rifle Regiment, Tasmania, favoured me with some of his finest specimens, with permission to reproduce them. His aerial effects are wonderful and delicate, too tender in most instances for reproduction by process: therefore I have been compelled to give one of his most positive pictures as a specimen of his art and the beauties of the country in which he works. [Illustration] WHERE ART BEGINS _A WORD BEFORE_ [Illustration: I]N the first flush of youth our imaginative faculties are very active. In childhood we rove through Fairyland and play with the little elves; in youth the tiny elves have grown up to be nymphs of our own size and age, and from the summer moonlight we step into the rosy dawn, all fragrant and lightsome, with a glamour over everything which is delicious to our senses. By-and-by, as youth falls from us, we step out from the glades and meadows into the dry and dusty highway of life, our bags upon our backs and our rakes in our hands, with a long stretch of uninteresting country before us and a shadeless sky above us; we go out to gather specimens and dissect everything which we cannot understand. Then comes the twilight, when we sit down to rest upon the cliffs at the end of the road, with a limitless ocean in front of us, and what we have left behind. In childhood, youth, and manhood we are for ever looking forward; in age we are apt to look behind. In childhood, youth, and manhood we have very little room in our hearts for pity or charity, but when we sit down calmly to rest and look back, if the angels of divine pity and universal charity are not near to us to counsel and condone, our case is hopeless in the extreme.