thus exposed by the deplorable exigencies of competition is not the only one which threatens the art. A glance at its several phases since 1800 and at its present state is enough to show that the line of talents has never once been interrupted; that those of to-day are every whit as vigorous and accomplished as those of the past; but that for opportunities of displaying their full power, and being appreciated at their true worth they have not seldom to wait in vain. CHAPTER IX. ENGRAVING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. At the beginning of the nineteenth century some of the most celebrated artists of the French school of painting belonged, by the nature of their talent as well as by the date of their chief successes, to the ante-revolutionary period. Greuze, Fragonard, Moreau, Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, Vien even, notwithstanding his intentions of reform, Regnault and Vincent, in spite of their influence as professors on the new generation--all seemed rather to recall the past than to herald the future. One man, Louis David, personified the progress of the epoch. His pictures, "Les Horaces," and the "Brutus," had appeared some years before, and the approaching exhibition of "Les Sabines" was impatiently expected. At this time the younger artists and the public unanimously regarded David as the regenerator of national art and a master justly supreme. Architecture, painting, furniture, even fashion in dress, were all subjected to his absolute sway; everything was done in imitation of the antique, as understood and interpreted by him. Under the pretexts of pure beauty and a chaste style, nothing but a soulless body, a sort of coloured statue, was represented on canvas; while sculpture became no more than an imitation of Greek or Roman statuary. Since Lebrun, indeed, no single influence had so completely tyrannised over French taste. Engraving, though fated like the other arts to accept the dictatorship of David, was at any rate the first to throw off his yoke. Before the Restoration, whilst the painter of Marat, then painter to the Emperor, was still in the fulness of his power, the great Italians, whose pictures crowded the Louvre, had already been interpreted with more respect for the memory of the old manner than submission to the requirements of the newer style.