Although the engraving of illustrations, or at least "light" subjects, was, in the eighteenth century, almost the only sort practised in France, even by the most eminent artists, some of these imparted to their productions a severer significance, and an appearance more in harmony with that of former work. Several--pupils of Nicolas Henri Tardieu, or of Dupuis--resisted with much constancy the encroachment of the fashionable style, and passed on to their scholars of all nations those teachings they had received in their youth. The Germans, Joseph Wagner, Martin Preisler, Schmidt, John George Wille; the Italian, Porporati; the Spaniards, Carmona and Pascal Molés; the Englishmen, Strange, Ingram, Ryland, and others, came, at close intervals, for instruction or improvement in this school. In Paris they published plates of various degrees of excellence; but, in the greater part of these, the nationality and personal sentiment of their authors are obliterated in acquired habits of taste and handling. Wille's prints, for instance--those even which have most contributed to his fame, "Paternal Instruction," after Terburg, or the "Dutchwoman Knitting," after Mieris--might just as well, for anything one sees to the contrary, have been the work of a French engraver of the same period. They only differ from plates bearing the name of Beauvarlet or of Daullé in a certain Teutonic excess of coldness in the handling; in a somewhat staid, and, as it were, metallic stiffness of arrangement. Carmona's "François Boucher," and his "Colin de Vermont," after Roslin, and Porporati's "Tancrède et Clorinde," after Carle Vanloo, have still less of the stamp of originality. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--PORPORATI. Susannah. After Santerre.] Finally, with the exception of Ryland, by reason of the particular process he employed, and of which we shall presently have to speak--and especially of Strange, who has his own peculiar mode of feeling, and a sort of merit peculiar to himself--none of the English engravers trained in the French school fail to show the signs of close relationship. Engravers of more original talent must be looked for neither amongst historical nor portrait engravers, nor even amongst engravers of genre. For information as to the state of the art outside of France, and apart from the French school, we must rather turn to the illustrations of books and almanacs engraved by Chodowiecki at Dantzic or Berlin, or to the vast plates from ancient Roman monuments etched--not without a certain rhetorical emphasis--by Piranesi. As for other second or third rate foreign engravers of the period, as for those _ragionevoli_ (as Vasari would have called them) whose work, if undeserving of oblivion, is likewise undeserving of attentive examination, we shall have done our part if we mention certain amongst them: as J. Houbraken, who worked at Dordrecht; Domenichino Cunego, of Rome; Weirotter, of Vienna; and Fernando Selma, of Madrid.