purse with a pretty page; and in doing
this we are but imitators. In the English magazines it is strange to
find a slavish, almost childish imitation of the American system of
illustration; adopting, for instance, the plan of pictures turned over
at the corners or overlapping each other with exaggerated black borders
and other devices of the album of the last generation. This is what we
have come to in England in 1894 (with excellent wood engravers still),
and the kind of art by which we shall be remembered at the end of the
nineteenth century! I am speaking of magazines like _Good Words_ and
_Cassell's Magazine_, where wood engraving is still largely employed.

It may be as well to explain here that the reasons for employing the
medium of wood engraving for elaborate illustrations which, such as we
see in American magazines, were formerly only engraved on copper or
steel, are--(1) rapidity of production, and (2) the almost illimitable
number of copies that can be produced from casts from wood blocks. The
broad distinction between the old and new methods of wood engraving is,
that in early days the lines were drawn clearly on the wood block and
the part not drawn cut away by the engraver, who endeavoured to make a
perfect fac-simile of the artist's lines. It is now a common custom to
transfer a photograph from life on to the wood block (_see p. 167_),
also to draw on the wood with a brush in tint, and even to photograph a
water-colour drawing on to the wood, leaving the engraver to turn the
tints into lines in his own way.

In the very earliest days of book illustration, before movable
type-letters were invented, the illustration and the letters of the text
were all engraved on the wood together, and thus, of necessity (as in
the old block books produced in Holland and Belgium in the fifteenth
century), there was character and individuality in every page; the
picture, rough as it often was, harmonising with the text in an
unmistakable manner. From an artistic point of view, there was a better
balance of parts and more harmony of effect than in the more elaborate
illustrations of the present day. The illustration was an illustration
in the true sense of the word. It interpreted something to the reader
that words were incapable of doing; and even when movable type was first
introduced, the simple character of the engravings harmonised well with
the letters. There is a broad line of demarcation, indeed, between
these ear