The engraving, though coarse, is executed in a bold and free manner; and the folds of the drapery are marked in a style which would do credit to a proficient. The whole subject, though expressed by means of few lines, is not executed in the very simplest style of art. In the draperies a diminution and a thickening of the lines, where necessary to the effect, may be observed; and the shades are indicated by means of parallel lines both perpendicular, oblique, and curved, as may be seen in the saint’s robe and mantle. In many of the wood-cuts executed between 1462 and 1500, the figures are expressed, and the drapery indicated, by simple lines of one undeviating degree of thickness, without the slightest attempt at shading by means of parallel lines running in a direction different to those marking the folds of the drapery or the outlines of the figure. If mere rudeness of design, and simplicity in the mode of execution, were to be considered as the sole tests of antiquity in wood-engravings, upwards of a hundred, positively known to have been executed between 1470 and 1500, might be produced as affording intrinsic evidence of their having been executed at a period antecedent to the date of the St. Christopher. In the Royal Library at Paris there is an impression of St. Christopher with the youthful Christ, which was supposed to be a duplicate of that in the possession of Earl Spencer. On comparing them, however, “it was quite evident,” says Dr. Dibdin, “at the first glance, as M. Du Chesne admitted, that they were impressions taken from _different blocks_. The question therefore was, after a good deal of pertinacious argument on both sides--which of the two impressions was the more ancient? Undoubtedly it was that of Lord Spencer.” At first Dr. Dibdin thought that the French impression was a copy of Earl Spencer’s, and that it might be as old as the year 1460; but, from a note added in the second edition of his tour, he seems to have received a new light. He there says: “The reasons upon which this conclusion [that the French cut was a copy of a later date] was founded, are stated at length in the preceding edition of this work: since which, I very strongly incline to the supposition that the Paris impression is a _proof_--of one of the _cheats_ of DE MURR.”[II-14]