ure and the commerce of a book better than the art in it. And
how should it be otherwise? The best books that were ever produced, from
an artistic point of view, were inspired and designed by students of art
and letters, men removed from the commercial scramble of life, and to
whom an advertisement was a thing unknown! The ordinary art education of
a publisher, and the multitude of affairs requiring his attention, unfit
him generally, for the task of deciding whether an illustration is good
or bad, or how far--when he cheapens the production of his book by using
photographic illustrations ("snap-shots" from nature)--he is justified
in calling them "art." The deterioration in the character of book
illustration in England is a serious matter, and public attention may
well be drawn to it.

Here we look for the active co-operation of the author. The far-reaching
spread of education--especially technical art education--is tending to
bring together, as they were never brought before in this century, the
author and the illustrator. The author of a book will give more
attention to the appearance of his pages, to the decorative character of
type and ornament, whilst the average artist will be better educated
from a literary point of view; and, to use a French word for which there
is no equivalent, will be more _en rapport_ with both author and
publisher.

For the illustrator by profession there seems no artistic leisure; no
time to do anything properly in this connection.

"It is a poor career, Blackburn," said a well-known newspaper
illustrator to me lately (an artist of distinction and success in his
profession who has practised it for twenty years), "you seldom give
satisfaction--not even to yourself."

"It is an _ideal career_," says another, a younger man, who is content
with the more slap-dash methods in vogue to-day--and with the income he
receives for them.

Referring again to the question in the _Athenaeum_, "Why is not drawing
for the press taught in our Government schools of art?" I think the
principal reasons why the art of illustration by the processes is not
generally taught in art schools are--

(1) drawing for reproduction requires more personal teaching than is
possible in art classes in public schools; (2) the art masters
throughout the country, with very few exceptions, _do not understand the
new processes_--which is not to be wondered at.

It is not the fault of the masters in our schools of art that