l--the nooks, the corners, the people, the
clothes, the arbors and gardens and teahouses, the queer courts of old
inns, the sun-warmed angles of old parapets. I ought to have mentioned
for completeness, in addition to his pictures to Goldsmith and to the
scraps of homely British song (this latter class has contained some of
his most exquisite work), his delicate drawing's for Mr. William Black's
_Judith Shakespeare_. And in relation to that distinguished name--I
don't mean Mr. Black's--it is a comfort, if I may be allowed the
expression, to know that (as, to the best of my belief, I violate
no confidence in saying) he is even now engaged in the great work of
illustrating the comedies. He is busy with "The Merchant of Venice;"
he is up to his neck in studies, in rehearsals. Here again, while in
prevision I admire the result, what I can least refrain from expressing
is a sort of envy of the process, knowing what it is with Mr. Abbey and
what explorations of the delightful it entails--arduous, indefatigable,
till the end seems almost smothered in the means (such material
complications they engender), but making one's daily task a thing of
beauty and honor and beneficence.

IV

[Illustration: Alfred Parsons]

Even if Mr. Alfred Parsons were not a masterly contributor to the pages
of Harper, it would still be almost inevitable to speak of him after
speaking of Mr. Abbey, for the definite reason (I hope that in giving it
I may not appear to invade too grossly the domain of private life)
that these gentlemen are united in domestic circumstance as well as
associated in the nature of their work. In London, in the relatively
lucid air of Campden Hill, they dwell together, and their beautiful
studios are side by side. However, there is a reason for commemorating
Mr. Parsons' work which has nothing to do with the accidental--the
simple fact that that work forms the richest illustration of the English
landscape that is offered us to-day. Harper has for a long time past
been full of Mr. Alfred Parsons, who has made the dense, fine detail
of his native land familiar in far countries, amid scenery of a very
different type. This is what the modern illustration can do when the
ripeness of the modern sense is brought to it and the wood-cutter plays
with difficulties as the brilliant Americans do to-day, following his
original at a breakneck pace. An illusion is produced which, in its very
completeness, makes one cast an uneasy ey