The Wonders of Engraving

first these two countries had interests in common : art assumed the same character for a time, and did not attain to separate and distinct importance until the middle of the seventeenth century, when Rembrandt on one side, and Rubens on the other, founded and directed a school, each in his respective country. The question as to whether the first wood engravings were printed in Germany or the Low Countries has always been the subject of earnest debate. Strange to say, the history of the origin of engraving, which is intimately connected with that of printing, becomes more and more obscure in proportion to thenumber of fresh documents discovered. Those who bring out these documents, with a date throwing back the invention for a few years, are generally too much blinded by vanity to be much enlightened by them. The greater number of the historians of engraving, who are Germans at heart and by birth, are unwilling to relinquish for their country the honour of the invention of engraving, but the Dutch energetically maintain a right of priority, which we consider worthy of belief. Let us not forget to add, that the Italians, not without pride, bring documents to support similar pretensions ; and that the French have attempted, but it must be owned without any success, to take a place among the first inventors of this art. Engraving on Wood.?We think that it was in the Low Countries, at Haarlem, that the ' Speculum Humanae Salvationis' first appeared. It is a re...