If, after considering the condition of engraving at the beginning of the present century, one should wish to become acquainted with its subsequent phases, assuredly one has to admit the pre-eminence of French talent. It may even be advanced that French engravers have maintained, and do still maintain, almost unaided the art of engraving within those limits from which it cannot deviate without the risk of becoming, as in Germany, a language of pure conventionality, or, as in England, the hackneyed expression of mere technical dexterity. Without doubt, evidences of broader and more serious talent were not lacking even in that school which some years earlier seemed to have gone to decay. After Volpato and Morghen, and in opposition to their example, there were Italian engravers who worked to such purpose as to redeem the honour of the school. The plates by Toschi and his pupils, from pictures and frescoes by Correggio at Parma; Calamatta's "Vœu de Louis Treize," after Ingres; Mercuri's "Moissonneurs," after Léopold Robert, and many prints besides, either by the same artists or others of their race, assuredly deserve to rank with the most important achievements of French engraving in the first half of the nineteenth century. But the years that have lapsed since their publication, while barren for Italy, have brought a continued harvest to France. After the engravers who made their appearance in the last years of the Restoration their pupils became masters in turn; and, in spite of adverse circumstances, the indifference of a section of the public, and the increasing popularity of photography, their zeal seems no more likely to diminish than the value of their work. Once, it is true, at the most brilliant period of English engraving, the French school was not without a moment of hesitation on the part of some, of disloyalty on that of others. During the First Empire, the existence of the art movement in London in the last years of the active rule of George III. and the beginning of the Regency was unsuspected in France. The cessation of commercial relations between the two countries left the French in such complete ignorance that, until 1816, the only English prints they knew were those by Strange, Ryland, and Woollett: those, in fact, published before the end of the eighteenth century. And when, after the Restoration, English work first came under the eyes of French engravers, the fascination of its novelty dazzled them more than the splendour of its merit.