It has been seen that George III. did his utmost to encourage line engraving, and that the exportation of prints soon became a source of revenue. How could the country neglect those wares which abroad were made so heartily welcome? The aristocracy set the example. Men of high social position thought it their duty to subscribe to important publications. In imitation, or from patriotism, the middle class in their turn sought to favour the growth of engraving; and when, some years later, it became the fashion to illustrate "Keepsakes" and "Books of Beauty" with steel engravings, their cheapness put them within everybody's reach. People gradually took to having prints in their houses, just as they harboured superfluities of other kinds; and, the custom becoming more and more general, engravers could be almost certain of the sale of any sort of work. This is still the case. In London, every new print may reckon on a certain number of subscribers. Hence the facility of production, and the constant mechanical improvements tending to shorten the work; hence, too, unfortunately, the family likeness and purely conventional charm of the English prints of the last half-century. A glance at any recent aquatints and mezzotints or into a new book of etchings, discovers nothing one does not seem to have seen a hundred times before. There are the eternal conflicts of light and darkness, the eternal contrasts between velvety and pearly textures. In its needless formality, this trickery resembles that of uninspired and styleless singers. A brief _piano_ passage is followed by a crashing _forte_; the whole thing consists in abruptness of contrast, and depends for success entirely upon surprise. In both cases this element is soon exhausted by too frequent use. The novelty of their appearance might at first impart a certain charm to English engravings; but the unending repetition of the same effect has destroyed their principal merit, and it is difficult to regard them with attention or interest. It would be unjust, however, to confine ourselves to the consideration of the abuse of general methods, and to say nothing of individual talents. England has produced some remarkable engravers since those in mezzotint formed by Reynolds and the landscape artists who were Woollett's pupils. Abraham Raimbach, for instance, was a fine workman, and a better draughtsman than most of his compatriots; his plates after Wilkie's "Blind Man's Buff," "The Rent-Day," and "The Village Politicians," deserve to be classed amongst the most agreeable works of modern engraving. Samuel William Reynolds, in his portraits after many English painters, and his plates from Géricault, Horace Vernet, and Paul Delaroche, and Samuel Cousins, in his engravings of Lawrence's "Master Lambton," "Pius VII.," and "Lady Gower and her Son," have succeeded in getting a good deal more from mezzotint than the eighteenth century masters.