might have been engraved, to perfection, with little more
pains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb by Correggio,
or imitate the texture of a dress by Sir Joshua,--and both, at last,
inadequately.

231. I will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mischief
arising out of the existing system: but will rapidly state what the
public should now ask for.

1. Exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining frescoes of
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in Italy, with so
much pale tinting as may be explanatory of their main masses; and with
the local darks and local lights brilliantly relieved. The Arundel
Society have published some meritorious plates of this kind from
Angelico,--not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but
conventionalizing the whole too much into outline.

2. Finished small plates for book illustration. The cheap wood-cutting
and etching of popular illustrated books have been endlessly mischievous
to public taste: they first obtained their power in a general reaction
of the public mind from the insipidity of the lower school of line
engraving, brought on it by servile persistence in hack work for
ignorant publishers. The last dregs of it may still be seen in the
sentimental landscapes engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. But the
woodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene and
accomplished line engraving; and the training of young artists in whom
the gift of delineation prevails over their sense of color, to the
production of scholarly, but small plates, with their utmost honor of
skill, would give a hitherto unconceived dignity to the character and
range of our popular literature.

3. Vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters, which
originally present noble contrasts of light and shade. Many Venetian
works are magnificent in this character.

4. Original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved in few
lines--(_not_ etched); and with such insistence by dotted work on the
main contours as we have seen in the examples given from Italian
engraving.

5. On the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and exquisite manual
dexterity are at present employed in producing large and costly plates,
such as that of the Belle Jardiniere de Florence, by M. Boucher
Desnoyers, should be entirely released from their servile toil, and
employed exclusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings,
from the