a distinction to the volume in watered-silk binding. The talented
authors, it is true, were in most cases under the disadvantage of
having to write to the plates of the talented artists, a practice
which even now is not extinct, though it is scarcely considered
favourable to literary merit. And the real "Annuals" were no
exception to the rule. As a matter of fact, their general literary
merit was not obtrusive, although, of course, they sometimes
contained work which afterwards became famous. They are now so
completely forgotten and out of date, that one scarcely expects to
find that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macaulay, and Southey, were among
the occasional contributors. Lamb's beautiful "Album verses"
appeared in the "Bijou," Scott's "Bonnie Dundee" in the "Christmas
Box," and Tennyson's "St. Agnes' Eve" in the "Keepsake." But the
plates were, after all, the leading attraction. These, prepared for
the most part under the superintendence of the younger Heath, and
executed on the steel which by this time had supplanted the old
"coppers," were supplied by, or were "after," almost every
contemporary artist of note. Stothard, now growing old and past his
prime, Turner, Etty, Stanfield, Leslie, Roberts, Danby, Maclise,
Lawrence, Cattermole, and numbers of others, found profitable labour
in this fashionable field until 1856, when the last of the "Annuals"
disappeared, driven from the market by the rapid development of wood
engraving. About a million, it is roughly estimated, was squandered
in producing them.

In connection with the "Annuals" must be mentioned two illustrated
books which were in all probability suggested by them--the "Poems"
and "Italy" of Rogers. The designs to these are chiefly by Turner
and Stothard, although there are a few by Prout and others.
Stothard's have been already referred to; Turner's are almost