The second and more evil tendency of recent engraving, toward an abandonment of line, is exhibited in many phases, and by nearly all the younger men. In some cases the central portion of the cut seems alone to be cared for, and is much elaborated, while the surrounding parts fade off into the background with the uncertainty of a dissolving view; in other cases there seems to be entire indifference about form or texture: there is no definition of the one nor discrimination in the other, but an effect only is sought for, usually vague or startling, always unsatisfactory, and not infrequently ugly. Such work is the product of ignorance or carelessness or caprice. In it wood-engraving ceases to be an art of expression. These obscure masses, meant for trees, in which one may look with a microscope and see neither leaf, limb, nor bark; these mottled grounds, meant for grass or houses, in which there is neither blade nor fibre; these blocks of formless tints, in which all the veracity of the landscape perishes, do not record natural facts, or convey thought or sentiment; they are simply vacant of meaning. To illustrate or criticise such work would be an ungracious as well as a needless task; but even in the best work of the best engravers, with which alone these pages are concerned, the marks of tendency in this wrong direction are palpably present. Here, for example, is some charming work by Mr. King (Fig. 78), wholly successful in securing the effect sought--beautiful, well worth doing. The spirit of the season, the moist days, the April nature, the leafing and budding in mist and cloudiness, and gleam of light and breath of warm, soft air along full-flowing streams, the swift and buoyant welcome borne on the forward flight of the birds straight toward us, the ever-renewed marvel of the birth of life and the coming on of days of beauty--the feeling of all this is given, and the success is due in large part to the vagueness that dims the whole design; but why should the wreathing flowers, the tender crown of all, lose the curve of their petals and darken the delicate form of each young blossom, all blurred into the background, and half-effaced and marred, and tiring the eye with the effort to define them? If the value of form had been more felt, if the definition of outline had been firmer, if the spray had really blossomed, would not the design have been better? There is less doubt of the error in the next cut. The disappearance of texture and the attenuation of substance into flat shadow is very plain. To a true woodsman, to one who has lived with trees, and knows and loves them, there is little of their nature in these vague, transparent, insubstantial forms, that seem rather skeleton leaves than strong-limbed, firm-rooted trees that have sung in the frosty silence and lived through the “bitter cold” of many a St. Agnes Eve. Who, looking on these pale shadows, would remember that the same