Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/215

 Rh Corfu, Ayesha, The Suliote Mother, and The Wounded Brigand, may have beguiled a few heavy moments after dinner; and perhaps little children in frilled pantalets and laced slippers peeped between the gorgeous covers, to marvel at the Sultana's pearls, or ask in innocence who was the dying Haidee. Death, we may remark, was always a prominent feature of annuals. Their artists and poets vied with one another in the selection of mortuary subjects. Charles Lamb was first "hooked into the 'Gem'" with some lines on the editor's dead infant. From a partial list, extending over a dozen years, I cull this funeral wreath:—

The Dying Child. Poem.

The Orphans. Steel engraving.

The Orphan's Tears. Poem.

The Gypsy's Grave. Steel engraving.

The Lonely Grave. Poem.

On a Child's Grave. Poem.

The Dying Mother to her Infant. Poem.

Blithesome reading for the Christmas-tide!

The annual was as orthodox as it was aristocratic. "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was not more edifying. "The Washerwoman