a eel 
442 Mechanical Processes of Engraving. 
varied cross-hatchings, slavishly tracing out line after line, 
and picking out dot after dot, while the sole business of his 
mind is to watch his hand, lest a false touch, a wrong de- 
gree of pressure, or some other apparently trivial error, 
should ruin the character or decrease the value of a costly © 
drawing; at the same time he must check his thoughts, 
lest his- attention should for an instant wander from the 
point of his graver. Speaking as an artist for artists, I 
think I may venture to assert, that this is not the labour 
we delight in, and that it is labour more fitted fora machine 
than for a man. 
But, nevertheless, the wood-engraver commonly looks 
upon the idea of engraving by machinery with scant favour, 
and hence we may reasonably infer, that any new process 
of this kind is likely to meet with much opposition from 
those whose means of living it appears to threaten. But 
as I have already said, if machinery has the effect of dimi- 
nishing manual labour by doing work with so much greater 
rapidity, efficiency, and cheapness, it also creates such an 
enlarged demand for things thereby produced, that the 
diminution of employment is more apparent than real. 
-An example of my meaning will be found in the history of 
the printing-press. When books were written by hand 
‘they were costly and scarce, but the introduction of a 
printing-machine converted the old writers into printers, 
and not only increased the supply of books, but soon 
created also a new and wonderful demand for them, which, 
as the printing process improved in rapidity, economy, and 
efficiency, grew, grew, and continued growing, until it has 
attained its present marvellous dimensions. It was the 
same with photography. Where one miniature was painted, 
thousands of portrait photographs are taken. So also has 
it been in other branches of industry ; in cotton manufac- 
ture, in coining, in preparing timber for various trades, in 
flattening iron, in calico-printing, in travelling by land and 
sea, in agriculture, and wherever else machinery has been 
introduced to save men from the drudgery and mental in- 
-dolence of mechanical labour. I think it probable, that 
should a mechanical process of engraving at last supersede 
-wood-engraving, every professional worker in that art will 
find far more pleasurable and more profitable employment 
as draughtsmen, that there will then be a far more ready 
and extensive market for the work of our young student 
artists, and that artists of eminence and popularity will be 
more highly esteemed than. ever, Thousands of works 
