This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1841. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... line engraving. Of all the various kinds of engraving, the art we are about to describe stands pre-eminently the first. However it may be surpassed by other branches of the profession in the representation of certain objects, yet as a whole it is decidedly superior to the rest. It cannot produce the velvety softness, intense depth, and harmonious mingling of light and shade, which is given by mezzotint. Neither can it, even when aided by the ruling machine, produce that silvery clearness, or deep transparent tone perceived in aquatint; nor like it, reproduce the dragging, scumbling, and accidental touches of the artist's brush. In crispness and brilliancy it is far exceeded by wood engraving. Still it stands before all others, and we cannot but see with regret, though not surprise, its present declining state. When steel was first applied to line engraving, the immense number of impressions it was found capable of producing, enabled the publishers to offer to the world, works beautifully illustrated, at a much cheaper rate than had hitherto been done. A new class of publications, we mean the annuals, were introduced as a vehicle for spreading more rapidly the impressions from steel plates, and the most beautiful productions of our best engravers were flung with a prodigal hand before the public, at a price for which they ought never to have been sold, and which only an excessive sale could render profitable. We are no enemies to cheapness in any thing, and still less in whatever may contribute to the mental enjoyment of the public, but when that cheapness is obtained by the reduced income of the artist, reduced, not from extravagant gains to fair remuneration, but from fair remuneration to insufficiency; when such is the case we cannot but lament, whilst we admi...