Wood engraving has made, in certain respects, considerable progress in the course of the last few years. In France and England it is producing results that not only confirm its advances, but are as the prophecy of still better things. Amongst recent prints, those of Robert, for instance, do more than promise; they realise the hopes which others only hold out. All the same, it is commonly the case with wood engravers that, clever though they be, they are apt to deceive themselves as to the special conditions of their art, and too often to forget that it is not their province to imitate the appearance of line engraving. Instead of attempting to copy the complicated results of the graver, they should rather, in accordance with the nature of the process at their disposal, be satisfied with rapid suggestions of effect and modelling and a summary imitation of form and colour. The illustrations after Holbein, by Lützelburger and other Germans of the sixteenth century, and the portraits and subjects cut on wood by Italian artists, or by Frenchmen of the same epoch, as Geofroy Tory and Salomon Bernard, are models to which the engravers of our own day would do well to conform, instead of entering, under pretext of improvements, upon attempted innovations as foreign to the true nature of the process as to its objects and real resources. Though the practice of line engraving is more scientific in France than anywhere else, it has nevertheless distinguished representatives in other countries. Besides the French, the German, and the Italian engravers we have mentioned, Weber, in Switzerland; De Kaiser, in Holland; Biot and Franck, in Belgium; Jacobi, Sonnenleiter, and Klaus, in Austria, are working manfully for the cause so well supported by Henriquel and his followers. But everywhere the perseverance of zeal and talent is unfortunately insufficient to overcome the prejudices of the public, and its exaggerated confidence in the benefits of mechanical discovery. Since the progress accomplished by science in the domain of heliographic reproduction, since the advantages with regard to material exactness that photography and the processes derived from it have offered, or seem to offer, line engraving, of all the different methods, is certainly the one that has suffered most from the supposed rivalry. A mistake, all the more to be regretted as it seems to be general, gave rise to the idea that it was all over with the art of engraving, simply because, as mere copies, its products could not have the infallible fidelity of photographic images, and that, however painstaking and faithful the engraver's hand, it could never produce that exact fac-simile, that ruthless imitation of the thing copied.