Such a book as Northcote's "Fables," published 1828-29, each fable having a head-piece drawn on wood from Northcote's design by William Harvey--a well-known graceful designer and copious illustrator of books up to comparatively recent times--and with initial letters and tail-pieces of his own, shows the outcome of the Bewick school. Finally "fineness of line, tone, and finish--a misused word," as Mr. W. J. Linton says, "was preferred to the simple charm of truth." The wood engravers appeared to be anxious to vie with the steel engravers in the adornment of books, and so far as adaptation was concerned, they had certainly all the advantage on their side. The ornamental sense, however, had everywhere declined; pictorial qualities, fineness of line, and delicacy of tone, were sought after almost exclusively. [Sidenote: STOTHARD AND TURNER.] Such books as Rogers's "Poems" and "Italy," with vignettes on steel from Thomas Stothard and J. M. W. Turner, are characteristic of the taste of the period, and show about the high-water mark of the skill of the book engravers on steel. Stothard's designs are the only ones which have claims to be decorative, and he is always a graceful designer. Turner's landscapes, exquisite in themselves, and engraved with marvellous delicacy, do not in any sense decorate the page, and from that point of view are merely shapeless blots of printers' ink of different tones upon it, while the letterpress bears no relation whatever to the picture in method of printing or design, and has no independent beauty of its own. Book illustrations of this type--and it was a type which largely prevailed during the second quarter of the century--are simply pictures without frames. [Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. JOHANN OTMAR. (AUGSBURG, 1502.)] [Sidenote: W. J. LINTON.] No survey of book illustration would be complete which contained no mention of William James Linton--whom I have already quoted. I may be allowed to speak of him with a peculiar regard and respect, as I may claim him as a very kind early friend and master. As a boy I was, in fact, apprenticed to him for the space of three years, not indeed with the object of wielding the graver, but rather with that of learning the craft of a draughtsman on wood. This, of course, was before the days of the use of photography, which has since practically revolutionized the system not only of drawing for books but of engraving also. It was then necessary to draw on the block itself, and to thoroughly understand what kind of work could be treated by the engraver.