etimes
is another thing to remember.

The future of the illustrator being uppermost in our thoughts, let us
consider further the influences with which he is surrounded. As to
photography, Mr. William Small, the well-known illustrator (who always
draws for wood engraving), says:--"it will never take good work out of a
good artist's hands." He speaks as an artist who has taken to
illustration seriously and most successfully, having devoted the best
years of his life to its development. The moral of it is, that in
whatever material or style newspaper illustrations are done, to hold
their own they must be of the best. Let them be as slight as you please,
if they be original and good. In line work (the best and surest for the
processes) photography can only be the servant of the artist, not the
competitor--and in this direction there is much employment to be looked
for. At present the influence is very much the other way; we are casting
off--ungratefully it would seem--the experience of the lifetime of the
wood engraver, and are setting in its place an art half developed, half
studied, full of crudities and discords. The illustrations which succeed
in books and newspapers, succeed for the most part from sheer ability on
the part of the artist; _they are full of ability_, but, as a rule, are
bad examples for students to copy. "Time is money" with these brilliant
executants; they have no time to study the value of a line, nor the
requirements of the processes, and so a number of drawings are handed to
the photo-engravers--which are often quite unfitted for mechanical
reproduction--to be produced literally in a few hours. It is an age of
vivacity, daring originality, and reckless achievement in illustration.
"Take it up, look at it, and throw it down," is the order of the day.
There is no reason but an economic one why the work done "to look at"
should not be as good as the artist can afford to make it. The
manufacturer of paperhangings or printed cottons will produce only a
limited quantity of one design, no matter how beautiful, and then go on
to another. So much the better for the designer, who would not keep
employment if he did not do his best, no matter whether his work was to
last for a day or for a year. The life of a single number of an
illustrated newspaper is a week, and of an illustrated book about a
year.

The young illustrators on the _Daily Graphic_--notably Mr. Reginald
Cleaver--obtain the maximum of effect wi