LOCKHART'S SPANISH BALLADS.*
Fifteen years have elapsed since first the Spaniel]. Ballads appeared in the Illustrated edition which was hailed with so much delight at the time of its advent, and has remained ever since honoured as a type of excellence by the lovers of splendid book-work. Now we have a second issue of it ; substantially the same, but with a more gorgeously elegant binding, a chaster delicacy of tint in its beautiful arabesque bor- dering, and in some instances the addition or substitution of still more exquisite specimens of that kind of decoration than almost any of the former ones. The detached plates have been omitted; a- portrait of Lockhart added, with the obituary memoir from the Times; saadosn'the whole, the volume is enhanced in lightness and brilliancy off nigh The gold is not.gilded but more richly golden, and the lily not paintell but bleached into tenderer purity.
The first appearance of the Ballads in this dress belongs to a period when the regular "illustrated book" system was perhaps marked by a more definite character than it is now-a-days. To that time belonged also Harvey's and Meadows's Illustrated Shaksperes, published by Knight and Tyas ; the Illustrated Arabian Nights; the Illustrated Don -Quixote, Paul and Virginia, Gil Bias, Devil on Two Sticks, and Robin- son Crusoe, naturalized here from France; the Pictorial History of Eng- land; and other books which will be remembered by many as epochs of delight in the experience of their adolescence. At the present day, the prevailing tone of illustrated literature is less that of a consecutive fol- lowing out of the text ; and leans more on the one side to gift-book ela- boration, and on the other to the reuniting of several artists, whose own varying individuality is displayed with greater prominence and more latitude of aim.
We need not, however, go far for a compendious reminder of much that has been best welcomed in the way of book-embellishment. The list of Murray's illustrated publications, subjoined to the Spanish Bal- lads, answers this purpose; presenting samples of the vinzair "Horace," Speckter's "Puss in Boots," Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon;" Wil- kinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Dr. Wordsworth's "Athens and Attica," and many others, down to the Architectural Handbook of Fergasson, which is yet fresh in our hands. May the list continue to swell !
• Ancient Spanish Ballads, Historical and Romantic. TVanslated. with Notes, by J. G. Lockhart, Esq. With numerous Illustrations, from Drawings by William Allan, B.A., David Roberts, B.A., Henry Warren, C. E. Aubrey, and William Harvey. The Borders and Ornamental Vignettes by Owen Jones. A new edition, revised. Published by Murray.
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