exquisitely precise
touches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine.

97. Now I take up Punch, at his best. The whole of the left side of John
Bull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--the
whole of the Lord Chancellor's gown, and of John Bull's and Sir Peter
Teazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision of
cross-hatching. These have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in
the most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window is
cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (Fig.
4).

There are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five interstices
each: approximately, 1,050--certainly not fewer--interstices to be
deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Now
calculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--the
number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men
are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the
occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the North
Americans fancy they have abolished slavery!

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

98. The workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task,
even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,--only
tedious. When you have once got into the practice, it is as easy as
lying. To cut regular holes WITHOUT a purpose is easy enough; but to cut
_ir_regular holes WITH a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricks
of tool or trade will give you power to do that.

The supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time
to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. But
is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like
the other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they
were irregular, and each different from the other. And an old
wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth
and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the
same time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only one
part of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made so
good an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any
standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or
not. I should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch,
that every line of the Dance of Death had been engraved by Holbein; we
know it wa