original work. The same number of hours of labor, applied with
the like conscientious skill, would multiply precious likenesses of the
real picture, full of subtle veracities which no steel line could
approach, and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and unaffected
enjoyment of painting; while the finished plate lies uncared for in the
portfolio of the virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in the
printseller's window by the people, to make them think that sacred
painting must always be dull, and unnatural.

232. I have named the above engraving, because, for persons wishing to
study the present qualities and methods of line-work, it is a pleasant
and sufficient possession, uniting every variety of texture with great
serenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice and
achievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open
line; artifices for which,--while I must yet once more and emphatically
repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in a
revived school of classic art,--I would fain secure the reader's
reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to which
they belong. Let him endeavor, with the finest point of pen or pencil he
can obtain, to imitate the profile of this Madonna in its relief against
the gray background of the water surface; let him examine, through a
good lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended in a
lance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of depth of shade
being restored by inserted dots, which prepare for the transition to the
manner of shade adopted in the flesh: then let him endeavor to trace
with his own hand some of the curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or
in the rounding of the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few of
the quiet undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the
hair; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of delightful
work which would be within the reach of such an artist, employed with
more tractable material on more extended subject.

233. If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing the mass
of the people, and enforcing among them the subtle attention necessary
to appreciate it, something might be pleaded in defense of its severity.
But all these plates are entirely above the means of the lower middle
classes, and perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself,
for the study I ask of him, even of the p