-the
first giving the law to everything; the second true Athenian, like
Athena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely;
and the third true Vulcanian, having the splendor and power of
accomplished labor.

Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture and
architecture, I am not going to speak at length in this course of
lectures. I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there is
one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in
connection with the other two branches of the art.

The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch
deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame
as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the
engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed
without notice.

But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it will
be legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, still
your furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody.

Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive their
furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink.

And you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for its
margin! Look here--the front of the church of San Michele of
Lucca,--white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here,--the steps
of the Giant's Stair, with lead for ink; or here,--the floor of the
Pisan Duomo, with porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with color
or with black, branches into all sorts of developments,--Florentine
mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts.

36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definition
of engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surface
with furrows." (Cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not
engravings.) A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on
hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration.

Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself from
ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort.

The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,--deliberately,
always,[C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. Engraving, on
the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line
produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel.

It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also
of restraint;