was chatting, quietly enough, with the young lady, the man opposite shouted out, "Oh, hold your tongue!" and to the young lady he said, "Don't listen to that old fool!"

I was puzzled by such an unwarranted aggression by a total stranger, but I decided to "make haste slowly" in preventing its repetition; so I did nothing at that time. At the seven o'clock dinner, just as I had taken my place at the table, the big sandy-haired man came to me and said that as there was a vacant chair to my left he would like to occupy it during our voyage if I did not object. Of course I answered that I would be very glad to have his company, and down he sat beside me. My enemy opposite had evidently taken a strong dislike to me, I know not why, but he was again gratuitously rude. After the dinner an incident occurred which resulted in insuring to me the peace and quiet which an inoffensive passenger is entitled to while traveling on a steamer. The Big Fellow strode up to my enemy and said to him: "See here! You have been very rude, at the table, to my friend Mr. Keppel, and I cannot see that he has given you any offense. Now, if this should happen again I warn you that you will have to reckon with me." "You," said the other, “who are you?" My champion went close to my enemy and said with quiet significance, "My name is Bob Fitzsimmons."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF

ENGRAVING

Reprinted, by permission, from Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1878, by Harper and Brothers

LTHOUGH the engraving of ornamental designs upon metal can be traced back to remote antiquity, yet the valuable discovery that impressions from engraved plates could be taken upon paper was, like many valuable discoveries, accidental. This was the epoch as important to art as the discovery of printing was to knowledge, and both for the same reason, for now impressions from plates, like impressions from type, could be multiplied and diffused without limit. This important invention of printing from engraved plates is claimed for Tommaso Finiguerra, a Florentine goldsmith. Finiguerra practised the decoration of gold and silver plates by filling engraved lines with a black enamel, which was allowed to harden, and to obtain the effect of the design, it was his custom to rub soot and oil into the incisions before permanently filling them with enamel, or niello. One of his plates thus filled was by chance laid face downward upon a sheet of paper, and when it was taken up-behold! the first impression from an engraved plate was seen upon the white surface.

The hint thus given was quickly improved by the artists of that age; engraving upon metal plates began to take rank as a fine art, and the golden age of engraving dawned upon the world. To-day, four centuries after, the ray of light which prints its image upon the sensitive plate of the camera falls aslant upon the fading glory of the art. Raphael Morghen, one of the last of the great engravers, died in 1833, and in 1839 Daguerre announced to the world the discovery of photography.

The engraving, according to Charles Sumner, is not a copy or imitation of the original represented, but a translation into another language, where light and shade supply the place of color. It does not reproduce the original picture except in drawing and expression; but as Bryant's "Homer" and Longfellow's "Dante" are presentations of the great originals in another language, so the engraving is a presentation of the painting in another material, which is another language. And it is here, as the translator and multiplier of the masterpieces of painting, that engraving finds its true sphere; so that we may define its excellence thus: a great painting reproduced by a great engraver.

The latter part of the fifteenth century was prolific in artistic genius. Truly, "there were giants in those days." Albrecht Dürer, the father of the German school, was born in 1471; that sublime genius Michael Angelo in 1474; Titian, the great Venetian colorist, in 1477; Raphael,