At an age when most men have scarcely passed their novitiate in art and are still under the direction and discipline of their masters and the schools, he had won a brilliant reputation and readers and scholars everywhere were gazing on his work with ever-increasing wonder and delight at his fine fancy and multifarious gifts. He has raised illustrative art to a dignity and importance before unknown and has developed capacities for the pencil before unsuspected. He has laid all subjects tribute to his genius explored and embellished fields hitherto lying waste and opened new and shining paths and vistas where none before had trod. To the works of the great he has added the lustre of his genius, bringing their beauties into clearer view and warming them to a fuller life.
