eproduction on the previous page owes its success not only to good
process, paper, and printing, but also to _the firm, decisive touch of
an experienced illustrator_ like Mr. Melton Prior. A pencil drawing in
less skilful hands is apt to "go to pieces" on the press.

Mr. C. G. Harper, in his excellent book on _English Pen Artists_, has
treated of other ways in which drawings on prepared papers may be
manipulated for the type press; but not always with success. In that
interesting publication, _The Studio_, there have appeared during the
past year many valuable papers on this subject, but in which the
_mechanism_ of illustration is perhaps too much insisted on. Some of the
examples of "mixed drawings," and of chalk-and-pencil reproductions,
might well deter any artist from adopting such aids to illustration.

The fact is, that the use of grained papers is, at the best, a makeshift
and a degradation of the art of illustration, if judged by the old
standards. It will be a bad day for the art of England when these
mechanical appliances are put into the hands of young students in art
schools.

For the purposes of ordinary illustrations we should keep to the simpler
method of line. All these contrivances require great care in printing,
and the blocks have often to be worked up by an engraver. _The material
of the process blocks is unsuited to the purpose._ In a handbook to
students of illustration this requires repeating on nearly every page.

As a contrast to the foregoing, let us look at a sketch in pure line by
the landscape painter, Mr. M. R. Corbet, who, with little more than a
scribble of the pen, can express the feeling of sunrise and the still
air amongst the trees.

[Illustration: "SUNRISE IN THE SEVERN VALLEY." (MATTHEW R. CORBET.)]

MECHANICAL DOTS.

Amongst the modern inventions for helping the hurried or feeble
illustrator, is the system of laying on mechanical dots to give shadow
and colour to a pure line drawing, by process. It is a practice always
to be regretted; whether applied to a necessarily hasty newspaper
sketch, or to one of Daniel Vierge's elaborately printed illustrations
in the _Pablo de Segovia_. One cannot condemn too strongly this system,
so freely used in continental illustrated sheets, but which, in the most
skilful hands, seems a degradation of the art of illustration. These
dots and lines, used for shadow, or tone, are laid upon the plate by the
maker of the block, the artist indic