246 OUT OF DOORS. 



there is no doubt that true art-power lay within him, 

 and that he did as much as could be done with the very 

 limited means at his command. They are worthy of a 

 city which produced such men as Durer, Bebem, Hele, 

 and Lobsinger, and are full of marvellous vigour, 

 ' cross-hatched ' here and there, but absolutely destitute 

 of grace, delicacy, softness, perspective, or expression. 

 There is not a face in the whole book which has the 

 least indication of human feeling or passion. If a 

 murder be represented, the murderer and his victim 

 are equally impassive of countenance ; so that if the 

 two heads were transposed the design would suffer no 

 injury. Facial expression was, in those days, beyond 

 the wood-engraver's powers, and scarcely anything 

 could be achieved except a hard, thick outline. Yet, 

 spite of these drawbacks any one of which seems 

 capable of ruining an illustration the vigorous power 

 of the woodcuts is deserving all praise. The lines are 

 hard and coarse, and the execution rough ; but, never- 

 theless, every line has its purpose, and tells its own 

 story, much unlike the inane prettiness produced by 

 the facile execution of our own day. 



Like the letterpress, the woodcuts treat of the 

 world's chronicle ; and by way of beginning at the 

 beginning, the first woodcut represents the Song of the 

 Morning Stars before the creation of the world. This 

 rather difficult subject is represented by a circular 

 space, quite blank, around which are tightly packed a 

 vast multitude of heads, each crowned with a sort of 



