indefeasible, immortal merit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is in the fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as can be ;-good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watchmaker, but with the intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows precisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned materials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not all measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel or divergent. He has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, and leaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no petrified mistakes; nor is the eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept it for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's higher power and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because duly subordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper to its own sphere. Among these, I must now reiterate, the first of all is the decorative arrangement of lines.

You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how a pattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, and across in another. So, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given by the texture of meshed lines.

Similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the engraver is, or ought to be, to cover it

with lovely lines, forming a lacework, and including a variety of spaces, delicious to the eye.

And this is his business, primarily; before any other matter can be thought of, his work must be ornamental. You know I told you a sculptor's business is first to cover a surface with pleasant bosses, whether they mean anything or not; so an engraver's is to cover it with pleasant lines, whether they mean anything or not. That they should mean something, and a good deal of something, is indeed desirable afterwards; but first we must be ornamental.-A. F., IV., § 125, 126.

31. THE ART OF ENGRAVING.-We will take, for example, the plate of Turner's "Mercury and Argus." I suppose most people, looking at such a plate, fancy it is produced by some simple mechanical artifice, which is to drawing only what printing is to writing. They conclude, at all events, that there is something complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel; so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an achievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes out by mere favour of the indulgent metal; or perhaps they think the plate is woven like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed by pasteboard cards punched full of holes? Not so. Look close at that engraving, imagine it to be a

drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. You must feel what you are doing with it, and know precisely what you have got to do; how deep, how broad, how far apart your lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of lines of etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). But suppose the plate were only a pen drawing: take your pen-your finest and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving. Nevertheless, take a strong magnifying glass to this-count the dots and lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice how the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its outline, of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the leaves; examine it well, and then-I humbly ask of you try to do a piece of it yourself! You clever sketcher-you young lady or gentleman of genius-you eye-glassed dilettante-you current writer of criticism royally plural,-I

beseech you,-do it yourself; do the merely etched outline yourself, if no more. Look you,-you hold your etching needle this way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then,-you scratch with it! it is as easy as lying. Or if you think that too difficult, take an easier piece ;-take either of the light sprays of foliage that rise against the fortress on the right, pass your lens over themlook how their fine outline is first drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distant rock is put in between, with broken lines, mostly stopping before they touch the leaf-outline; and again, I pray you, do it yourself, if not on that scale, on a larger. Go on into the hollows of the distant rock,traverse its thickets,-number its towers;-count how many lines there are in a laurel bush—in an arch-in a casement; some hundred and fifty, or two hundred, deliberately drawn lines, you will find, in every square quarter of an inch;-say three thousand to the inch,-each, with skilful intent, put in its place! and then consider what the ordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have been trained to this!-Cestus of Aglaia, III. (O. R., I., § 347).

32. EXECUTION IN PAINTING.-You will continually hear artists disputing about grounds, glazings, vehicles, varnishes, transparencies, opacities, oleaginousnesses. All that talk is as idle as the East wind. Get a flat surface that won't

crack, some coloured substance that will stick upon it, and remain always of the colour it was when you put it on,-and a pig's bristle or two, wedged in a stick; and if you can't paint, you are no painter; and had better not talk about the art. The one thing you have to learn-the one power truly called that of "painting"-is to lay on any coloured substance, whatever its consistence may be, (from mortar to ether,) at once, of the exact tint you want, in the exact form you want, and in the exact quantity you want. That is painting.

Now you are well aware that to play on the violin well requires some practice. Painting is playing on a colour-violin, seventy-times-seven stringed, and inventing your tune as you play it! That is the easy, simple, straightforward business you have to learn. Here is your catgut and your mahogany, better or worse quality of both of course there may be,-Cremona tone, and so on, to be discussed with due care, in due time;—you cannot paint miniature on the sail of a fishingboat, nor do the fine work with hog's bristles that you can with camel's hair :-all these catgut and bristle questions shall have their place; but the primary question of all is—can you play?

Perfectly, you never can, but by birth-gift. The entirely first-rate musicians and painters are born, like Mercury;-their words are music, and their touch is gold: sound and colour wait on them from their youth; and no practice will ever