fashionable architect, was ruling in place of the immortal Wren, and Kneller was so long and so assuredly the pictorial idol of the country that Pope, its poet-in-chief, could actually write of him that “great Nature fear’d he might outvie her works.” Then, all else of pictorial art meant either Thornhill’s wearisome ceilings and stair-cases, or the stiff and tasteless portraiture, with stereotyped posture, of the lesser Knellers, such as Jonathan Richardson, Highmore, and Jervas, whom Pope made even more ridiculous by his praises. With only such painters as these to interpret, what chance had even such admirable engravers as John Smith, George White, John Simon, Faber, Peter Pelham, whose mezzotints even were beginning to wane in favour for lack of pictorial interest? It is no great wonder then that, seeing Le Blon’s failure, in spite of all his influence and achievement, the engravers in mezzotint were not eager to try the principles of his “Coloritto” in their own practice, and so colour-printing suffered a set-back in this country. But Le Blon’s prints are of great value to-day. What, then, has become of those 9,000 copies printed by the Picture Office? The £600 worth sold before the bankruptcy must have represented about a thousand, yet these impressions from Le Blon’s fifty-plates are of extreme rarity even in the museums of the world, and it has been suggested by Herr Singer, and also by Mr. A. M. Hind, in his valuable “History of Engraving and Etching,” that many copies of the large prints, varnished over, may be hanging in old houses under the guise of oil paintings, thus fulfilling their original purpose. It is an interesting conjecture, and how plausible one may judge from the varnished copies in the British Museum. Le Blon’s really important venture inspired no imitators in England, but it was followed by a few experimental attempts to embellish engravings with colour. These were chiefly adaptations of the old _chiaroscuro_ method, surface-colour being obtained by using several wood-blocks in combination with engraved copper-plates. Arthur Pond and Charles Knapton, painters both, imitated a number of drawings in this manner, the designs being etched; while, some years earlier, Elisha Kirkall (“bounteous Kirkall” of the “Dunciad”) had successfully used the coloured wood-blocks with mezzotint plates, strengthened with etched and graven lines. His pupil, J. B. Jackson, however, engraved only wood for his remarkable prints. But these experiments were merely sporadic; they led to nothing important and continuous in the way of colour-printing.