times even that of the apple-tree, beech, and even mahogany and pine. The wood is cut across the ends of the fibre, of the thickness of type; and after being smoothly planed, a thin covering of white is rubbed over the surface; after which the drawing to be engraved is made upon it with a lead pencil, or with India-ink, or both combined. The block is then cut away with the graver, in such manner as to leave the lines of the drawing all in relief, like type. On copper or steel, on the contrary, the drawing is sunk into the plate, and is necessarily printed with greater slowness and care, and at a greater cost. In engravings printed in colors, a separate block is made for each tint.

from that to other plates for the printer. The product is thus greatly cheapened, inasmuch as all the pictures, the central vignette, the end scene or portrait, and the bottom or tail piece, usually put upon a bank note, can be furnished for the cost of a special engraving of one of them. Mr. Perkins' system is employed throughout England and the continent of Europe, no less than all over the United States. By it the art of bank note engraving has been so perfected among us that only the highest skill and the costliest machinery can now produce successful counterfeits. Nothing remained but to insure the bank note against the wonderful power of the art of photography, and this security our Copper-plate engraving is an art as old, engravers and paper makers have provided. almost, as xylography or wood-cutting. A In 1858-9 the principal bank note engravers picture upon this metal is preserved in Ger- of the country formed themselves into two many of as ancient a date as 1461. Instead of associations, the American and the National the simple wooden blocks of other days, our Bank Note Companies, and in the early cotton manufacturers now print their calicoes years of the National Banks, they prepared from copper plates of cylindrical form, by for the government the elaborate engravings which improvement the fabrics are made in- of the National Bank Notes, as well as the finitely more beautiful and greatly cheaper. simpler plates of the Legal Tender Notes. Most of the larger print-works employ skil- These notes and National Bank notes havful artists and engravers to produce their de- ing now become the only bank circulation signs, paying them large salaries for their of the country, they are prepared by the labors. In some establishments thousands government. Among the successful Ameriof dollars are thus profitably expended each can steel engravers of bank notes and other year. Copper-plate engraving, after reaching works, are Durand, Smillie, Cheney, Sarthe highest degree of excellence, both at tain, Danforth, Dick, Casilear, and Alfred home and abroad, has, within the present Jones. Engraving on copper or steel is century, given way in a great measure to practiced in its most simple form, called the superior capacity of the steel plate, a line engraving, by covering the face of the capacity revealed to the world and developed polished metal with a thin surface of melted in the highest degree by Jacob Perkins, of white wax; on this the sketch is transferred by Newburyport, in Massachusetts. Mr. Per- laying, face down, a tracing of the design in kins, who began his experiments about 1805, black lead pencil upon the wax, and subjectmay, indeed, almost be said to have invented ing it to a heavy pressure; the lines are steel engraving, since the metal had been then seen distinctly upon the wax when the used only once before his time, in an English paper is removed. The workman then with print in Smith's "Topographical Illustrations a fine graver makes the lines through upon the of Westminster." Mr. Perkins discovered metal; after which the wax is melted off and the present invaluable processes by which the engraver proceeds to complete the work the steel plate is so hardened after being by cutting the lines to the proper depth and engraved, that by the pressure upon it of other soft plates, the picture can be transferred in relief and again repeated so as to duplicate the work to any extent. The first impression in relief, from which duplicates of the original engraving are made, is taken upon a soft steel cylinder by repeated rollings over the hardened plate. By this process any bank note vignettes can be transferred, in combination, at will, from the separate original plates to the steel cylinder, and

In

shade. The graver, when in use, is pressed
forward, cutting a furrow and raising burrs
on each side. The burr, pushed up by the
graver in its progress, is removed by the
scraper. Lines are softened by rubbing over
with a smoothly pointed burnisher.
some instances the burrs made by the finest
etching needles being allowed to remain,
produce a pleasing effect, seen in some of
Rembrandt's engravings. The parallel lines
that are sometimes required in series are

cut by a ruling machine. The fainter shades, too delicate for the graver, are scratched in with a needle.

In the stippling or dotted style, the effect is produced by dots made in curved lines, with the graver. The more closely the dots are grouped together, the darker the shade, and the whole effect is more like painting than the line engraving. In the shadows of the limbs of the human figure it is much used, and sometimes in portraits the line and stipple are combined with good effect.

The style called etching is practised upon other metals, also upon glass. By this process the coating of wax is formed of white wax, Burgundy pitch, and asphaltum, and is applied in silk bags, through which the composition oozes. When the plate is covered it is held over a smoking lamp until the wax is covered with lamp-black. The lead pencil design is then laid upon this lamp-black and pressed. The lines are then drawn through the wax, and nitric acid with four parts water is poured upon the plate. This remains until the fainter portions of the sketch are corroded. The acid is then poured off and the plate washed with water. An application of lamp-black and turpentine, called stopping, is applied with a camel's hair brush to those portions sufficiently corroded; a reapplication of the acid eats deeper into those parts that require deeper lines. This process of stopping is repeated until the work is complete. Being then cleaned of the wax, those portions of the plate that require it are gone over with the graver, and not unfrequently the shades are stippled.

The invention has been ascribed to Sir Christopher Wren. The plate is roughed up by running over its surface little toothed wheels of different degrees of fineness, called cradles, which by a rocking motion are caused to raise little burrs, pointing in different directions. The whole plate being thus made rough, the burrs are rubbed off with. scrapers, wherever light shades are required, and the shades are deepened by increasing the burrs. The effect is fine where dark grounds are desired. This method combined with etching, produces an improved style. Some mezzotints are now prepared for the trade by a machine. The prints wear much better on steel than on copper.

Admirable examples of these branches of the art may be seen in the superb landscape works of Smillie, especially those from the four pictures of Cole's Voyage of Life, in Durand's works after Vanderlyn's, in our many beautiful illustrated books, in the publications of the late American Art Union, and, as already intimated, in the dainty vignettes which embellish our bank notes.

In the art of die sinking-a process conducted in a similar manner to that already described of the transfer in relief of the impression from a hardened plate or plug of steel to a soft plate, and from that again, when hardened, to yet another-many admirable works have been produced. Excellent examples may be seen in the medals of Allston, Stuart, and other subjects executed for the American Art Union by the late C. C. Wright.

By the assistance of the electrotype proAquatinta is a French invention of 1662, cess, the work of the engraver is now repeatand takes its name from the resemblance it ed, in as many copies as may be desired, has to water colors on India-ink drawings. each of the copper transcripts thus produced After the design is etched in outline and the being an absolute duplicate of the original wax removed, a solution of Burgundy pitch plate or block. It is these electrotyped copin alcohol is poured over the plate as it lies in ies which are now used by the printer, the an inclined position. The alcohol evaporat- same picture sometimes on several presses at ing, the pitch remains. The design is then once, while the original wood block is predrawn with a gummy syrup called the burst-served untouched, except to form the mould ing-ground, which is applied only wherever a for other copies in metal when they may be shade is wanted. The whole is then covered required. The effect of this power of perwith a turpentine varnish; water being left fect and inexpensive repetition of engraved on it for fifteen minutes, the bursting-ground blocks has been to reduce the cost of pictocracks open and exposes the copper. The rial illustrations to a point within the cometching process is then pursued. Sometimes pass of the most unpretending purse, and colors are applied and printed from the plate; thus to send good examples of the engraver's but when there are different tints, it is cus-art to the remotest and humblest corners of tomary to use a distinct plate for each one.

The mezzotinto, or half-painted style, was introduced into England by Prince Rupert.

the land.

What may be the consequences of the many processes, now more or less perfected,

was established. This society lived a year, held one exhibition, and was forgotten.

Conducted in part by laymen, it labors under some of the disadvantages of the old superIn 1802, some art-loving citizens of New seded American Academy. It was founded York, headed by Edward Livingston, found- as early as 1807, and is now a flourishing ed the New York, afterward the American and most useful institution, keeping a valuAcademy of Fine Arts. There were so few able permanent gallery always open to the artists in this society, and the governing in- public view, and providing besides an annual fluence was so little of a professional charac- display of the current productions of our ter, that it was an academy of art only in artists. It possesses also a fine collection of name, and quite failed in its office of an acad-casts from the antique, gratuitously accessiemy. The necessary result was an inefficient ble to all students. life, until it was, in due time, superseded by a better organized establishment. This result followed in 1826, in the institution of the present National Academy of Design.

The art gallery of the Athenæum in Boston, serves, in a measure, the purposes of an academy in that city. Of late years Academies of Art have sprung up in some form, The National Academy, thus founded by and with more or less success, in many other Morse, and his brother artists of the period, of our chief cities, as in Baltimore, Charleshas steadily advanced to this day in position ton, Brooklyn, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinand usefulness, and now numbers among its nati, and elsewhere, giving us a fair promacademicians and associates nearly all the ise of picture galleries and facilities for art leading painters of the land. Its annual ex-study, as general and as liberal as our wants hibitions have been prepared, without inter- demand. ruption, from 1826 until now, with a cata- Besides these institutions for the use of the logue of works extended gradually from less profession itself, there is happily a rapid exthan two hundred, to over eight hundred, tension throughout the Union of drawing and with an aggregate of receipts from less schools for all classes of the population. than nothing up to six or seven thousand Professorships of drawing are being introdollars annually. The academy has always dured into our universities and colleges, and supported free (evening) schools for the study a higher standard is being everywhere set of the antique statuary, and the living models; up in our seminaries of all grades. Schools i schools, to which any student has access, of Design for women are springing up in our when coming with the required preparatory larger cities, and such an institution has knowledge of the use of the crayon. Mem- been in successful operation in connection bership in the academy, except in the grade with the Cooper Union of New York for of "student," is awarded only to professional thirteen or fourteen years past, under the artists, and then by ballot, as a mark of hon-highest promise of successful result. When orary distinction. The progress of art in the principles of art become universally America during the last forty or fifty years cannot be better seen than in the continued growth of the National Academy, and in its present large and varied exhibitions as compared with those of days gone by. An art academy was founded in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1867, which is in a very flourishing condition. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia is doing a good work, though it is not so fully an association of artists only as is the National Academy at New York.

known to us, as we have good cause to believe they soon will be, we shall realize the fact not only in the increased excellence and fame of our pictures and our sculptures, but in the higher beauty, utility, and value of our manufactures and fabrics of all kinds, from the rarest luxury to the simplest article. of necessary use. In another and less material sense we shall feel it and enjoy it, in breathing the air of a more refined and more beautiful social and national life.