rfect theme which proves to
be the hardest to treat adequately. Clothe a broomstick with fancies,
even of the flimsiest tissue paper, and you get something more or less
like a fairy-king's sceptre; but take the Pompadour's fan, or the
haunting effect of twilight over the meadows, and all you can do in
words seems but to hide its original beauties. We know that Mr. Austin
Dobson was able to add graceful wreaths even to the fan of the
Pompadour, and that another writer is able to impart to the misty
twilight not only the eerie fantasies it shows the careless observer,
but also a host of others that only a poet feels, and that only a poet
knows how to prison within his cage of printed syllables. Indeed, of the
theme of the present discourse has not the wonder-working Robert Louis
Stevenson sung of "Picture Books in Winter" and "The Land of Story
Books," so truly and clearly that it is dangerous for lesser folk to
attempt essays in their praise? All that artists have done to amuse the
august monarch "King Baby" (who, pictured by Mr. Robert Halls, is fitly
enthroned here by way of frontispiece) during the playtime of his
immaturity is too big a subject for our space, and can but be indicated
in rough outline here.

[Illustration: "ROBINSON CRUSOE." THE WRECK FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
CHAP-BOOK]

Luckily, a serious study of the evolution of the child's book already
exists. Since the bulk of this number was in type, I lighted by chance
upon "The Child and his Book," by Mrs. E. M. Field, a most admirable
volume which traces its subject from times before the Norman conquest to
this century. Therein we find full accounts of MSS. designed for
teaching purposes, of early printed manuals, and of the mass of
literature intended to impress "the Fear of the Lord and of the
Broomstick." Did space allow, the present chronicle might be enlivened
with many an excerpt which she has culled from out-of-the-way sources.
But the temptation to quote must be controlled. It is only fair to add
that in that work there is a very excellent chapter to "Some
Illustrators of Children's Books," although its main purpose is the text
of the books. One branch has found its specialist and its exhaustive
monograph, in Mr. Andrew Tuer's sumptuous volumes devoted to "The Horn
Book."

[Illustration: "CRUSOE AND XURY ESCAPING" FROM AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
CHAP-BOOK]

Perhaps there is no pleasure the modern "grown-up" person envies the
youngsters of the hour