the utmost demanded of the little ones even as late as the beginning of this century, when illustrated books designed especially for their instruction were not infrequent.

"THE WALLS OF BABYLON." ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER. 1790)

As Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton pointed out in his charming essay, "The New Hero," which appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine (Dec. 1883), the child was neglected even by the art of literature until Shakespeare furnished portraits at once vivid, engaging, and true in Arthur and in Mamillus. In the same essay he goes on to say of the child—the new hero:

"MERCURY AND THE WOODMAN." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)

"And in art, painters and designers are vying with the poets and with each other in accommodating their work to his well-known matter-of-fact tastes and love of simple directness. Having discovered that the New Hero's ideal of pictorial representation is of that high dramatic and businesslike kind exemplified in the Bayeux tapestry, Mr. Caldecott, Mr. Walter Crane, Miss Kate Greenaway, Miss Dorothy Tennant, have each tried to surpass the other in appealing to the New Hero's love of real business in art—treating him, indeed, as though he were Hoteï, the Japanese god of enjoyment—giving him as much colour, as much dramatic action, and as little perspective as is possible to man's finite capacity in this line. Some generous art critics have even gone so far indeed as to credit an entire artistic movement, that of pre-Raphaelism, with a benevolent desire to accommodate art to the New Hero's peculiar ideas upon perspective. But this is a 'soft impeachment' born of that loving kindness for which art-critics have always been famous."

"THE BROTHER AND SISTER." ILLUSTRATION FROM "BEWICK'S SELECT FABLES." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1784)

It would be out of place here to project any theory to account for this more recent homage paid to children, but it is quite certain that a similar number of The Studio could scarce have been compiled a century ago, for there was practically no material for it. In fact the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light, and far less ancient than printing with movable types, which of itself seems the second great event in the history of humanity, the use of fire being the first.

"LITTLE ANTHONY." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)

"LITTLE ADOLPHUS." ILLUSTRATION FROM "THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE MIND." BY THOMAS BEWICK (1792)

To leave generalities and come to particulars, as we dip into the stores of earlier centuries the broadsheets reveal almost nothing intended for children—the many Robin Hood ballads, for example, are decidedly meant for grown-up people; and so in the eighteenth century we find its chap-books of "Guy, Earl of Warwick," "Sir Bevis, of Southampton," "Valentine and Orson," are still addressed to the adult; while it is more than doubtful whether even the earliest editions in chap-book form of "Tom Thumb," and "Whittington" and the rest, now the property of the nursery, were really published for little ones. That they were the "light reading" of adults, the equivalent of to-day's Ally Sloper or the penny dreadful, is much more probable. No doubt children who came across them had a surreptitious treat, even as urchins of both sexes now pounce with avidity upon stray copies of the ultra-popular and so-called comic papers. But you could not call Ally Sloper, that Punchinello of the Victorian era—who has received the honour of an elaborate article in the Nineteenth Century—a child's hero, nor is his humour of a sort always that childhood should understand—"Unsweetened Gin," the "Broker's Man," and similar subjects, for example. It is quite possible that respectable people did not care for their babies to read the chap-books of the eighteenth century any more than they like them now to study "halfpenny comics"; and that they were, in short, kitchen literature, and not infantile. Even if the intellectual standard of those days was on a par in both domains, it does not prove that the reading of the kitchen and nursery was interchangeable.

Before noticing any pictures in detail from old sources or new, it is well to explain that as a rule only those showing some attempt to adapt the drawing to a child's taste have been selected. Mere dull transcripts of facts please children no less; but here space forbids their inclusion. Otherwise nearly all modern illustration would come into our scope.

A search through the famous Roxburghe collection of broadsheets discovered nothing that could be fairly regarded as a child's publication. The chap-books of the eighteenth century have been adequately discussed in Mr. John Ashton's admirable monograph, and from them a few "cuts" are here reproduced. Of course, if one takes the standard of education of these days as the test, many of those curious publications would appear to be addressed to intelligence of the most juvenile sort. Yet the themes as a rule show unmistakably that children of a larger growth were catered for, as, for instance, "Joseph and his Brethren," "The Holy Disciple," "The Wandering Jew," and those earlier pamphlets which are reprints or new versions of books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and others of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

ILLUSTRATION FROM "SKETCHES OF JUVENILE CHARACTERS"
(E. WALLIS. 1818)

In one, "The Witch of the Woodlands," appears a picture of little people dancing in a fairy ring, which might be supposed at first sight to be an illustration of a nursery tale, but the text describing a Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend—"Dr. John Faustus"—appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest—the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical pamphlets enjoy a large