the floods of cheap but splendidly illustrated magazines which are appearing on both sides of the Atlantic. True, many of these blocks are due to the "processes" which photography has made available, but they are nevertheless the outcome of wood engraving. We cannot leave this subject without mentioning the admirable "Treatise on Wood Engraving," by W. A. Chatto, with numerous illustrations, published originally by H. G. Bohn in 1839 and since reprinted. [Illustration: Fig. 100.--Wood block from Bewick's "British Birds." The common duck.] [Illustration: Fig. 101.--Wood engraving by Clennell, after Stothard, for Rogers's Poems, 1812.] In our days the great Paris publishers have returned to the books of the eighteenth century, ornamented with vignettes on copper; many of them purely and simply imitate by photographic processes the pretty editions of Eisen and Moreau, but they do not merit the name which they bear. As to those whose specialty is handsome books with figures by contemporary artists, those who always are in the front, as the Mames, Quantins, Hachettes, Plons, Jouausts, of France; the Longmans, Murrays, Macmillans, Kegan Pauls, Cassells, and Chattos of England; the Harpers, Scribners, Lippincotts, and Houghtons of the United States, they are to us what the ancients of whom we have spoken were to their contemporaries. Now the processes of illustration are without number: wood, metal, heliogravure, phototype, and others. And if the mechanical means, if the heliogravures, have at present the importance claimed, they by no means add to the intrinsic value of wood engravings, but to the rapidity and economy of their manufacture. The Book, the true Book, has nothing to do with all these inventions, and may well confine itself to the burin or the relief block. But as regards the Book, properly so called, it never was the object of more excessive care or of more unfortunate precipitation. It may be remarked that works least destined to live in the libraries, those thousands of lame pamphlets on questions of small provincial erudition or the cap-and-sword romances, are ordinarily the best and most carefully printed, in opposition to other more important works composed in heads of nails and on worn-out paper. There are in reading-rooms a good number of pamphlets that will not be found in fifty years, and will be worth their weight in banknotes, even if dirty and tattered, on account of their intrinsic value. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. TYPES, IMPRESSION, PAPER, INK.