y,
virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any
more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the
bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.

13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose
that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect
transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography
enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number,
facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists
themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these
new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is
to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;
the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the
charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed
tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of
these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be
separately studied, and distinctively applied?

14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to
be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable
without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing
will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at
all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a
light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or
should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some
entirely distinct merit?

15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk
about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when
engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so,
do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is
deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it
is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and
offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its
steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling
of the artist?

16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and
_Linear_?--