The scope of this volume does not allow any detailed account of the works of American engravers individually; but while the increased productiveness and improved technique of the art during the third quarter of the century are being noticed, it would be unjust to make no mention of the quiet, careful, and refined woodcuts of Mr. Anthony, or of the long and unflinching fidelity of Mr. Linton, with its reward in admirable work, or of the exquisite skill of Mr. Henry Marsh, the best of American engravers of that period. The latter’s marvellous rendering of insect life in the illustrations to Harris’s Insects Injurious to Vegetation, published in 1862, can never be forgotten by any who have been fortunate enough to see the artist-proofs. His work is in the manner of copperplate-engraving, and affords one of the few instances in which wood-engraving has equalled the rival art in fineness, delicacy, softness, and gradation of tone. Whatever the critic’s theory may be, he must remember that genius has a higher validity than reason, and must acknowledge such work as this to be its own justification. Unfortunately, the cuts in the published volume were not--perhaps at that time could not be--printed with the success they deserved. The work of these three engravers illustrates what advance had already been made in skilful line-arrangement and in technique before 1870, about which time the indications of an approaching change in the art became plainly evident. Since then progress has been uninterrupted, swift, marked by bold experiments and startling surprises. Now American engravers excel all others in knowledge of the resources of their art, and in control of its materials, as well as in the interest of their work. They have not, it is true, produced, as yet, anything to rank in artistic value with the designs of the older masters; but, in their hands, the art has gained a width and utility of influence among our people hitherto unequalled in any nation at any period. From the beginning of its history wood-engraving has been distinctively a democratic art; at present the ease and cheapness of its processes and the variety of its applications make it one of the most accessible sources of inexpensive information and pleasure; for this reason it has acquired in our country, where a reading middle class forms the larger portion of the nation, a popular influence of such far-reaching and penetrative power as to make it a living art in a sense which none other of the fine arts can claim. It now enters into the intellectual life and enjoyment of our people to a degree and with a constancy impossible to other arts. In this respect, too, it is only at the beginning of its career; for, as popular education spreads, the place that the art holds in the national life will continually become more important. These social conditions, the technical skill of the engravers, and the appearance among the people of a critical spirit concerning their