Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
It is the consummation of art to have the design of him whose canvases record the sunlit splendours of the Golden Age, wedded with the song of the poetess of whom the grateful Florentines recorded on slab of marble on the wall of Casa Guidi, she "linked her England with our Italy."
There is little doubt that to the collector with small means the school of wood engraving after these great designers we have indicated from 1858 to 1870 offers remarkable facilities for acquiring for a small outlay some remarkable examples of this art. Unfortunately bad printing and bad paper have lessened the artistic excellence to a very considerable degree. It is almost wonderful that the printers did not batter the wood blocks out of all recognition. The original design as drawn on the wood block was one thing, and the finished result when printed was another, especially in the pages of a magazine. But we must be thankful for what is now remaining as an inadequate record of a great period of English design when the achievements of one or two of the greatest among the men who drew on the wood block entitle them to be regarded as in the first rank.
There is something particularly charming in collecting these old wood engravings. They are to be
