The impressions obtained from engraved _plates_ of metal or from _blocks_ of wood are commonly called engravings, and sometimes prints. Formerly the word _cuts_[I-3] was applied indiscriminately to impressions, either from metal or wood; but at present it is more strictly confined to the productions of the wood engraver. Impressions from copper-plates only are properly called _plates_; though it is not unusual for persons who profess to review productions of art, to speak of a book containing, perhaps, a number of indifferent woodcuts, as “a work embellished with a profusion of the _most charming plates_ on wood;” thus affording to every one who is in the least acquainted with the art at once a specimen of their taste and their knowledge. [Footnote I-3: Towards the close of the seventeenth century we find books “adorned with _sculptures_ by a curious hand;” about 1730 we find them “ornamented with _cuts_;” at present they are “illustrated with _engravings_.”] Independent of the difference of the material on which copper-plate engraving and wood engraving are executed, the grand distinction between the two arts is, that the engraver on copper corrodes by means of aqua-fortis, or cuts out with the burin or dry-point, the lines, stipplings, and hatchings from which his impression is to be produced; while, on the contrary, the wood engraver effects his purpose by cutting away those parts which are to appear white or colourless, thus leaving the lines which produce the impression prominent. In printing from a copper or steel plate, which is previously warmed by being placed above a charcoal fire, the ink or colouring matter is rubbed into the lines or incisions by means of a kind of ball formed of woollen cloth; and when the lines are thus sufficiently charged with ink, the surface of the plate is first wiped with a piece of rag, and is then further cleaned and smoothed by the fleshy part of the palm of the hand, slightly touched with whitening, being once or twice passed rather quickly and lightly over it. The plate thus prepared is covered with the paper intended to receive the engraving, and is subjected to the action of the rolling or copper-plate printer’s press; and the impression is obtained by the paper being pressed _into_ the inked incisions.