lingering in that mine of modern art-books--the "Art Journal;" and,
not so very long ago, it made a sumptuous and fugitive reappearance
in Dore's "Idylls of the King," Birket Foster's "Hood," and one or
two other imposing volumes. But it was badly injured by modern
wood-engraving; it has since been crippled for life by photography;
and it is more than probable that the present rapid rise of modern
etching will give it the coup de grace. {11}

By the end of the seventeenth century the art of engraving on wood
had fallen into disuse. Writing circa 1770, Horace Walpole goes so
far as to say that it "never was executed in any perfection in
England;" and, speaking afterwards of Papillon's "Traite de la
Gravure," 1766, he takes occasion to doubt if that author would ever
"persuade the world to return to wooden cuts." Nevertheless, with
Bewick, a few years later, wood-engraving took a fresh departure so
conspicuous that it amounts to a revival. In what this consisted it
is clearly impossible to show here with any sufficiency of detail;
but between the method of the old wood-cutters who reproduced the
drawings of Durer, and the method of the Newcastle artist, there are
two marked and well-defined differences. One of these is a
difference in the preparation of the wood and the tool employed.
The old wood-cutters carved their designs with knives and chisels on
strips of wood sawn lengthwise--that is to say, upon the PLANK;
Bewick used a graver, and worked upon slices of box or pear cut
across the grain,--that is to say upon the END of the wood. The
other difference, of which Bewick is said to have been the inventor,
is less easy to describe. It consisted in the employment of what is
technically known as "white line." In all antecedent wood-cutting
the cutter had simply cleared away those portions of the block left
bare by the design, so that the design remained in relief to be