nd Canal, Venice; and E. Goodall's of
the upper fall of the Tees. The men who engraved these plates might have
been exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held
captive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while
the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a
Turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork;
and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them worth
a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of the corner of a Bewick vignette.

136. And now, I think, you cannot fail to understand clearly what you
are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from that of painting.
Turn back to the 'Astrologia' as a perfect type of the purest school.
She is gazing at stars, and crowned with them. But the stars are _black_
instead of shining! You cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof
that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro.

Nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot; and she
casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind her.

All these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may relieve the
forms, and give value to the linear portions. The face, though turned
from the light, is shadowless.

Again. Every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with the
subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,--no texture,--no
mystery. The plumes of the wings are set studiously in their
places,--they, also, lusterless. That even their filaments are not
drawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of a
bird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. Of these in a
future lecture.[AF]

[Illustration: IV.

"By the Springs of PARNASSUS."]

137. The 'Poesia,' Plate IV., opposite, is a still more severe, though
not so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almost
to the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. I need scarcely point out to
you that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but
notice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to every
dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots which
indicate the sprinkled shower falling from the vase into the pool.

138. This habit of strict and calm attention, constant in the artist,
and expected in the observer, makes all the difference between the art
of Intellect, and of mere sensation. For every detail of this plate has
a meaning, if you care to unders