drawn, we may refer to the woodcuts
after Albert Duerer and Holbein, and the line engraving of Marc Antonio.
The engraved plates by Duerer furnish excellent examples of work, with
more and finer lines than his woodcuts [but many of the latter were not
done by his hand]. "Some of the etchings of Rembrandt are examples of
what may be fairly reproduced in pen and ink, but in them we find the
effect to depend upon innumerable lines in all directions. In the matter
of landscape the etched plates by Claude and Ruysdael are good examples
for study, and in animal life the work of Paul Potter and Dujardin."

Thus, for style, for mastery of effect and management of line, we must
go back to the old masters; to work produced generally in a reposeful
life, to which the younger generation are strangers. But the mere
copying of other men's lines is of little avail without mastering the
principles of the art of line drawing. The skilful copies, the
fac-similes of engravings and etchings drawn in pen and ink, which are
the admiration of the young artist's friends, are of little or no value
in deciding the aptitude of the student. The following words are worth
placing on the walls of every art school:--

"Proficiency in copying engravings in fac-simile, far from suggesting
promise of distinction in the profession of art, plainly _marks a
tendency to mechanical pursuits_, and is not likely to be acquired by
anyone with much instinctive feeling for the arts of design." There is
much truth and insight in this remark.

[Illustration: "THE FINDING OF THE INFANT ST. GEORGE." (CHARLES M.
GERE.) (_From his painting in the New Gallery, 1893._)]

In line work, as now understood, we are going back, in a measure, to the
point of view of the missal writer and the illuminator, who, with no
thought of the possibilities of reproduction, produced many of his
decorative pages by management of line alone (I refer to the parts of
his work in which the effect was produced by black and white). No amount
of patience, thought, and labour was spared for this one copy. What
would he have said if told that in centuries to come this line work
would be revived in its integrity, with the possibility of the artist's
own lines being reproduced 100,000 times, at the rate of several
thousand an hour. And what would he have thought if told that, out of
thousands of students in centuries to come, a few, a very few only,
could produce a decorative page; and that few