same as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern
line engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing in
attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what it
ought first to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure,
vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in its
failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than in
what it rationally and rightly prefers and performs.

125. Here, for instance, I have enlarged the head of one of Duerer's
Madonnas for you out of one of his most careful plates.[AB] You think it
very ugly. Well, so it is. Don't be afraid to think so, nor to say so.
Frightfully ugly; vulgar also. It is the head, simply, of a fat Dutch
girl, with all the pleasantness left out. There is not the least doubt
about that. Don't let anybody force Albert Duerer down your throats; nor
make you expect pretty things from him. Stothard's young girl in the
swing, or Sir Joshua's Age of Innocence, is in quite angelic sphere of
another world, compared to this black domain of poor, laborious Albert.
We are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen,
but of engraving. And the merit, the classical, indefeasible, immortal
merit of this head of a Dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is in
the fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as can
be;--good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but with
the intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows
precisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned
materials. He works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not all
measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel or
divergent. He has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, and
leaves the mistake, frankly. But there are no petrified mistakes; nor is
the eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept
it for final excellence. The engraving is full of the painter's higher
power and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because duly
subordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper to
its own sphere. Among these, I must now reiterate, the first of all is
the _decorative_ arrangement of _lines_.

126. You all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how a
pattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, and
across in another. So, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given b