English engravers, then, had begun to rank as artists. Callot, and, after him, other French engravers already remarkably skilful, had succeeded in founding a school which was soon to be honoured by the presence of true masters; Italy and Germany were deteriorating steadily. Meanwhile, what was going on elsewhere? In Spain there was a brilliant galaxy of painters, some of whom, like Ribera, have left etchings; but there were few or no professional engravers. In Switzerland, Jost Amman of Zurich (1539-1591) was succeeded by a certain number of illustrator-engravers, heirs of his superficial cleverness and of his commercial rather than artistic ideas: engravers, by the way, who are commonly confounded with the German masters of the same epoch. Lastly, the few Swedes or Poles who studied art, whether in Flanders or Germany, never succeeded in popularising the taste for it in their own countries; only for form's sake need they be mentioned. The first of the two great phases of the history of engraving ends about the middle of the seventeenth century. We have seen that the influence of Marc Antonio, though combated at first by the influence of Albert Dürer, easily conquered, and prevailed without a rival in Italy, Germany, and even France, until the appearance of Callot and his contemporaries. Meanwhile, in the Low Countries the art presented a physiognomy of its own, developed slowly, and ended by undergoing a thorough, but brief, transformation under the authority of Rubens. The Flemish school was soon to be absorbed in that of France, and the second period, which may be termed the French, to begin in the history of engraving. Were it permissible, on the authority of examples given elsewhere, to compare a multitude of men separated by differences of epoch and endowment, we might arrange the old engravers in the order adopted for a group of much greater artists by the painters of the "Apotheosis of Homer" and the "Hemicycle of the Palais des Beaux-Arts." Let us regard them in our mind's eye as a master might figure them. In the centre is Finiguerra, the father of the race; next to him, on the one side, are the Master of 1466, Martin Schongauer, and Albert Dürer; on the other, Mantegna and Marc Antonio, surrounded, like the three German masters, by their disciples, amongst whom they maintain an attitude of command. Between the two groups, but rather on the German side, is Lucas van Leyden, first in place, as by right, among the Dutchmen. Below these early masters, who wear upon their brows that expression of severity which distinguishes their work, comes the excited crowd of daring innovators, whose merit is in the spirit of their style--Bolswert, Vorsterman, Pontius, Cornelius Visscher, Van Dalen, and their rivals. Rembrandt muses apart, sombre, and as though shrouded in mystery. Lastly, in the middle distance, are seen the merely clever engravers: the Dutch Little Masters, Callot, Hollar, and Israel Silvestre.