388 ARIADNE FLORENTINE 



exhibiting every possible artifice and achievement in the dis. 

 tribution of even and rugged, or of close and open line ; arti- 

 fices for which, while I must yet once more and emphati- 

 cally repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be pract- 

 ised in a revived school of classic art, I would fain secure 

 the reader's reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted 

 by the school to which they belong. Let him endeavour, with 

 the finest point of pen or pencil he can obtain, to imitate the 

 profile of this Madonna in its relief against the grey back- 

 ground of the water surface ; let him examine, through a good 

 lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended 

 in a knee-point as they approach it ; the exact equality of depth 

 of shade being restored by inserted dots, which prepare for 

 the transition to the manner of shade adopted in the flesh : 

 then let him endeavour to trace with his own hand some of the 

 curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or in the rounding of 

 the lip ; or if these be too impossible, even a few of the quiet 

 undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the 

 hair ; and he will, I trust, begin to comprehend the range of 

 delightful work which would be within the reach of such an 

 artist, employed with more tractable material on more extend- 

 ed subject. 



If, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing 

 the mass of the people, and enforcing among them the subtle 

 attention necessary to appreciate it, something might be plead- 

 ed in defence of its severity. But all these plates are entirely 

 above the means of the lower middle classes, and perhaps not 

 one reader in a hundred can possess himself, for the study I 

 ask of him, even of the plate to which I have just referred. 

 What, in the stead of such, he can and does possess, let him 

 consider, and, if possible, just after examining the noble 

 qualities of this conscientious engraving. 



Take up, for an average specimen of modern illustrated 

 works, the volume of Dickens's ' Master Humphrey's Clock/ 

 containing ' Barnaby Rudge.' 



You have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous 

 story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, 

 a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean 





