telling illustrator, as for the story-teller himself, brevity is the soul of wit. For, after all, these illustrators are but part artists, they are better part story-tellers and moralists.
But in the lapse of time since the publication of Doyle's "Punch" an appreciable change has come over our way of regarding a number of things; and if we look about for a minor art with the aim and disposition of the illustrative work of Doyle's day, we find that among these things is illustration. The point of view of the earlier illustrator has to a great extent been abandoned, and a new position taken up. Improved processes of reproduction, greatly our own invention, have been an accompaniment and in a measure a cause of this change; and to-day, considering the force and enthusiasm with which we have occupied the new ground, it is fair to say that the preponderance in the matter of illustration has passed from England to America. This has been a source of comfortable feeling on our part, which is doubtless perfectly justifiable. No one will deny that our art of illustration is in many and important respects a great advance beyond the work of Doyle's day. But is this art of illustration in which we excel available for the uses of "Punch"? Is its tendency such that one would naturally expect to find among its exponents a number of men well disposed to go about "Punch's" business? In the march of time and civilization, as in other marches, we occasionally leave in the abandoned camps things which might better have been brought along; and in comparing our contemporary illustration with that of "Punch's" youth, one cannot help feeling that in our care for many things we have neglected one; indeed, for the purposes of "Punch" we fear that the soldier, in looking out for his knapsack, his blanket, his boots, and his rations, has come away without his gun. The typical contemporary illustrator has none of the old freedom and force of characterization. The improved processes of reproduction enable him to consider fruitfully, within the limits of black and white, drawing, color, composition; and he does consider them, much to the exclusion of the Hogarthian illustrator's prime concern,—the idea. He exhausts the resources of wood-cutting in the way of rendering tones and values, and frequently makes pictures of great beauty; but, although it would be quite unjust to say of him that he is an admirable talker with nothing to say, it is true that what he has to say is calculated to give us agreeable feelings and pleasurable emotions rather than keen conceptions. His aim, in fact, is purely artistic, and it is a question whether the interest of accurate definition is served by including the work of him who is an artist if anything and before all, and that of him who is an artist, if at all, only as it were by the way, in the common category of illustration. There can, however, be no question that it is on the Hogarthian type of illustration, on the moralistic and literary art of the idea, with its easy rapidity and certainty of characterization, that "Punch" must rely for exhibiting our friends and commenting on life. The modest, story-telling phase of illustration is usually a hardy, wayside growth rather than the product of the academic garden, and, so far as this goes, it might have been looked for among us; but our minor art, however innocent of the schools, is nevertheless a very sophisticated affair, and one need go no farther than the young woman with the decorative plate and the prize Christmas-card to learn how out of place is the moralistic or literary note in the vocation. The sensuous folds of Hamlet's inky cloak are seemingly its occupation rather than that within, which passeth show truly, but which the elder illustrator hinted at so shrewdly. But can we expect the career of an American "Punch" to be blessed which agrees to the cynicism that we have our friends when we have merely their clothes? If we catch the idea, we can with a powerful effort of the imagination supply the wardrobe; but a dress-coat without ideas will not do. It has been abundantly tried, and
