The works of the Louis XIII. engravers heralded this new departure, and prepared the way for the real masters. As soon as, with a view to securing a certain measure of independence, the French school of painting had begun to free itself from the spirit of systematic imitation, the art of line engraving proceeded resolutely along an open path, and marked its course by still more significant improvements. To say nothing of Thomas de Leu--who for that matter was not, perhaps, born in France[33]--and nothing of Léonard Gaultier, who, like De Leu, principally worked in the reign of Henri IV., Jean Morin, whose method, at once so picturesque and so firm, was the result of a peculiar combination of acid, dry-point, and the graver, Michel Lasne, Claud Mellan--in spite of the somewhat pretentious ease and rather affected skill of his handling--and other line engravers, variously capable, each after his kind, are found to owe nothing to foreign example. Their works already do more than hint at the new departure; but we are approaching the period when distinguished engravers become so common in the French school, that in this place we need only mention those whose names are still of special importance. Robert Nanteuil, one of the most eminently distinguished, and, taking them chronologically, one of the first, was destined for the bar, and in his youthful tastes showed none of that irresistible tendency to the arts which is the common symptom of great talent. Whilst studying literature and science at Rheims, where he was born in 1626, he also took up drawing and engraving, but with no idea of devoting himself steadily to either. It seems, however, that after having merely dallied in odd moments with the art which was one day to make him famous, he very soon concluded that he had served a sufficient apprenticeship; for at nineteen he set about engraving the frontispiece to his own philosophical thesis. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--JEAN MORIN. Antoine Vitré. After Philippe de Champagne.]