Plantin died at the age of seventy-four, leaving a prosperous business to be divided between his three daughters. His first house at Antwerp employed seventeen presses even at the time when he was in trouble, and he had branches at Paris and Leyden, of less consequence. His second daughter married Moretus, and to him descended the Antwerp workshop; he and his descendants continued the printing house until recently; the house of the great printer and publisher is now a typographical museum. The Plantin printing office--"Officina Plantiniana"--was as well managed by its descendants as by himself. The fashion of engraving in metal spread itself before the death of the head of the house, and his successors continued it. The principal engravers with the burin of the Low Countries were employed by them: Wierix, Galle, Pass, Mallery, Van Sichern; it was a real school of illustration, that created by degrees a precious and sustained style, not without influence on the artists of that epoch. It was from this particular manner that came Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gaultier in France; and from Antwerp came those small religious figures that have lasted to our time in their incomprehensible mysticism. The title-pages of the Plantin printing office inaugurated the _passe-partout_ engraved by the burin, overloaded and complicated, of which the seventeenth century took advantage. To tell the truth, these elaborate displays, blackened by ink, do not accord well with the titles; and there is a long distance between this decadence and the books ornamented with wood blocks by the Italians and French of the commencement of the century. Exception must be made in favour of Rubens, who designed many of these titles. The heavy and squat architecture of the time was least of all appropriate to these decorations, which wanted grace. It passed from Plantin into France through the engravers; it went to Rome with Martin de Vos and John Sadeler; it imposed itself everywhere; and from that day to this it has not ceased. At the time of which we write it had taken its flight in France, and spread itself in Europe with extraordinary success. Engraving in relief, holding its own until then, gave way little by little before this invasion. When Henri IV. mounted the throne wood engraving had finished its upward movement, it still remained in the _canards_, or popular pieces sold at low prices, but it is easy to see what these hasty vignettes are worth. [Illustration: Fig. 65.--Frontispiece of a book from Plantin's printing office. Metal engraving.]