ly wood engravings (such, for instance, as the "Ars Moriendi,"
purchased for the British Museum in 1872, from the Weigel collection at
Leipsic, and recently reproduced by the Holbein Society) and the last
development of the art in the American magazines. The movement is
important, because the Americans, with an energy and _naivete_ peculiar
to them, have set themselves the task of outstripping all nations in the
beauty and quality of magazine illustrations. That they have succeeded
in obtaining delicate effects, and what painters call colour, through
the medium of wood-engraving, is well known, and it is common to meet
people in England asking, "Have you seen the last number of _Harper's_
or the _Century Magazine_?" The fashion is to admire them, and English
publishers are easily found to devote time and capital to distributing
American magazines (which come to England free of duty), to the
prejudice of native productions. The reason for the excellence (which is
freely admitted) of American wood-engraving and printing is that, in the
first place, more capital is employed upon the work. The American
wood-engraver is an artist in every sense of the word, and his education
is not considered complete without years of foreign study. The American
engraver is always _en rapport_ with the artist--an important
matter--working often, as I have seen them at _Harper's_, the _Century
Magazine_, and _Scribner's_ in New York, in the same studio, side by
side. In England the artist, as a rule, does not have any direct
communication with the wood engraver. In America the publisher, having a
very large circulation for his works, is able to bring the culture of
Europe and the capital of his own country to the aid of the
wood-engraver, spending sometimes five or six hundred pounds on the
illustrations of a single number of a monthly magazine. The result is
_an engraver's success_ of a very remarkable kind.

[Illustration: XXXV.

_A Portrait_ engraved on wood at the Office of the CENTURY MAGAZINE.

Example of portraiture from the _Century Magazine_. It is interesting
to note the achievements of the American engravers at a time when wood
engraving in England is under a cloud.

This portrait was photographed from life and afterwards worked up by
hand and most skilfully engraved in New York.

(_Photograph from life, engraved on wood. From the Century
Magazine._)]

A discussion of the merits of the various styles of wood