From the line-engraving by Giuseppe Longhi (1766-1831), after the painting by Correggio. Engraved in 1809. The engraving is of the same dimensions as the original painting, which is one of the treasures of the Dresden Gallery.

Paris, so far from being dead or disabled, won the medal for line engraving, at the Paris salon of 1890. A few have lingered on in Germany: such as Burger of Munich, Professor Trossin of Königsberg, and Professor Rudolph Stang of Dusseldorf; and Charles Burt, the artist, who has produced the most important line engraving ever executed in America, "The Last Supper," has died only recently.

But the great schools of line engraving which had existed for centuries in Paris, London, and elsewhere are now deserted, and not one pupil is learning this beautiful art, to take the places of the masters who have passed away. What is the cause of this? Is it that line engraving, which for centuries has been the faithful exponent of painting as well as the prime embellisher of fine books, is now found to be inartistic and worthless? Is it that those engravings which have so long been treasured in the best museums of Europe, because they were believed to be beautiful works of art, are beautiful works of art no longer? No. Good engravings are now as beautiful as they ever were, and they always will remain so.

But in this utilitarian age when "time is money" no line engraver could spend long years in learning his profession, and then devote four, five, or six years to the engraving of a single plate after some famous picture, when that picture could be photographed in the fraction of one second. And just as the express train has superseded the stagecoach, and the telegraph and telephone have dis

placed the mounted courier, so photography and reproductive methods founded on photography, as well as the etcher's rapid method, have forever killed line engraving as the only art whereby the masterpieces of painting can be reproduced and multiplied, and the engraver will no longer go hand in hand with the creative painter as he had done for nearly four centuries.

But, happily for art, though the engravers "rest from their labors" yet "their works do follow them." Engraving is dead - but the engravings themselves are not dead- and what is more, they will not die. I grant that just now they are "out of fashion"; but just as I hope we shall live to see the day when every new dwelling need not be a "Queen Anne" house, twisted and tormented into a jumble of unmeaning gables and balconies and corners; just as I hope the time is near when it will no longer be fashionable to rack our brains in trying to understand the obscure and contorted poetry of Swinburne and his school and if I dare say so of Browning; while Tennyson and Walter Scott and Goldsmith and old Shakespeare, as well as Longfellow and Rudyard Kipling, have given us their clear thought in plain language: so I am convinced that those neglected old engravings will soon resume their legitimate rank as being the best reproductions of the great paintings of the past.

Perhaps no event of the last five hundred years, not even the discovery of America, has wrought such universal good as the invention of

THE DANCE OF THE CUPIDS AND THE CARRYING AWAY OF PROSERPINE Size of the original print, 25 by 30 inches.

From the line-engraving by Francesco Rosaspina (1762-1842), after the painting by Francesco Albani, now in the Brera Gallery at Milan.

MADONNA DELLA SCALA

Size of the original print, 14 by 10 inches.

From the line-engraving by Paolo Toschi (1788-1854), after the fresco by Correggio, now in the gallery of the Academy at Parma. This is admitted to be the most beautiful of all Toschi's engravings, and is one of the few which he engraved entirely with his own hand, and without the assistance of any of his pupils.