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    Untitled Article

    There is another branch of design in which this is practicable * Martin found that his paintings , beautiful as they were , were not a profitable trade , and he became an engraver . This is to pointings what printing is to manuscripts . For one man who can or will give a thousand guineas for a painting , there are thousands

    who will give a guinea for an engraving . By the method of steel rollers , engravings on a small scale may be multiplied almost without limit ; and the smaller engravings , by their extensive circulation , are becoming already a most powerful instrument in civilization . The effect of all beauty is to raise and ennoble the attributes of humanity , —to spread universal love . Every atom ,

    every fibre in my material frame , every particle of what we are accustomed to designate as mind , spirit , or soul , is thrilling with this great truth . The sensations passing through my brain seem intense ; the blood rushes quicker through jny veins , while I dwell on it ; I love all beauty . It is a comprehensive phrase , which I will some day take for my text .

    Time was that engravings were mere daubs , wretched woodenlooking things , which , in many cases , people might have worshipped without any risk of breaking the commandment , being neither c the likeness of anything in heaven above , or in the earth beneath , or in the waters under the earth , ' But that time has

    passed , and people are no longer satisfied with the wooden things whose meaning it was necessary to explain by a text or quotation . They are , it is true , still far short of perfection , and this must probably be attributed , in many cases , to the want of beautiful models . These cannot , it is to be feared , be found in cold

    countries , —and certainly not in the countries of stays and neckcloths . All bandages , and all prescribed modes of sitting in formal upright postures , are destructive of beauty : they prevent the due development of the human form ; and alas I in all cold climates , they must more or less prevail , though much may still be done in alleviation , whenever reason shall bear the sway to the exclusion of absurd fashion ; a thing which seems distant , but which will be

    much accelerated by the passing of the Reform Bill , whose results should be called Legion , for they are many , —not however of evil but of good . To return to the engravings ; there are some which have appeared of late , which are really worthy of the hackneyed name of * gems . ' 1 allude to the illustrations of Byron ; and let me remark , en passant , I could wish that the art of painter and engraver were always combined , as those of physician and chemist should ever be . The editor of the * Black Dwarf * used to set

    his types direct from his brain , without the intervention of a MS . ; and engravers , being endowed with the genius of poetry , starting into design , might strike out many felicitous things by those flashes of . the spirit , designated sudden inspiration ; and , at aijy rate , their hands would thus acquire greater freedom of execution .

    Untitled Article

    On the State , of the Fine Art * in England . li

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/11/