pictorialism are only foisted upon the public by the halfpenny illustrated press. Sir John Gilbert was the man for the hour. Messengers were despatched to his house at Blackheath with a wood block and a verbal description of the subject required. The boy was told to take a walk on the heath for an hour or two, and on his return the block was ready. The Crimean War in 1854, the Indian Mutiny in 1857, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 demanded pictorial treatment.
Time was as important a factor in these days as cost, with the advance of cheaper photographic methods, came to be at a later date. The wood engraver who worked against time must be pardoned as the victim of a system. He often sat up all night to produce a block just in time to satisfy public curiosity. In examining some of this old work the collector will observe straight white lines cutting up the picture into sections. This is due to an invention, late in the sixties, by Mr. Wells, which enabled the wood block to be cut into squares and joined together, each square being engraved by a different man. As many as ten engravers sometimes worked on one block. As may be readily imagined, this did not help to advance wood engraving as an art. It was ingeniously commercial.
This collaborative engraving, where a man was given a piece of a big surface to engrave to fit on to the work of several others, was the first step to destroy all artistic value in wood engraving, and the shops of engraving—Dalziels, Swain, Charles Roberts, and others—did more to destroy individuality, and
