If there is any value in the teaching of the past, either these principles must be shown to be no longer valid, or by them the engraving of the last ten years must be judged. A considerable portion of it consists of attempts to render original designs--for example, a washed drawing--not by interpreting its artistic qualities, its form, color, force, spirit, and manner, so far as these can be given by simple, defined, firm lines of the engraver’s creation, but by imitating as closely as possible the original effect, and showing the character of the original process, whether it were water-color, charcoal-sketching, oil-painting, clay-modelling, or any other. However desirable it may be to make known the original process, such knowledge does not enhance the artistic value of the cut; and however pleasing it may be to the public to obtain copies even successfully, indicating the general effects, without the charm, of originals in other arts with which wood-engraving has little affinity, such work will rather satisfy curiosity than delight the eye. The public may thus derive information; they will not obtain works of artistic value at all equal to those which wood-engraving might give them, did it not abdicate its own peculiar power of expressing nature in a true, accurate, and beautiful way and descend to mechanical imitation. The application of the art to such purposes, as little more than another mode of photography, is a debasement of it; it ceases to be a fine art when it ceases to be practised for the sake of its own powers of beautiful expression. Such work, therefore, has only a secondary interest, as being one more process for the defective reproduction of beautiful things, and requires only a passing mention. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--“And silent were the sheep in woolly fold.”--KEATS, _St. Agnes Eve_. Engraved by J. G. Smithwick.] [Illustration: FIG. 81.--The Old Orchard. Engraved by F. Juengling.]