consequently artistic value, than anything else in modern wood engraving. To-day the American process engraver has struck a new note in photographic reproduction by reverting to individual personal work, and in the current magazines much of this work bears the name of the man who has worked on the half-*tone block.
The great American school of wood engravers has produced some of its best work in the Century and in Harper's Magazine. These magazines are better printed than anything appearing in England, and consequently greater justice is done to the work of designers and engravers.
The masters of the American wood engravers were our own weekly illustrated papers. In the eighties they drew inspiration from the best work of the English wood engravers, and the walls of the engraving rooms of the American illustrated magazines were covered with wood engravings from the old country. The experiments of Mr. W. L. Thomas, of the Graphic, to reproduce by wood engraving the tones of wash-drawing, or of the chalk sketches, were carefully treasured across the Atlantic. The influence of W. J. Linton, the engraver whose masterly use of white line is exemplified in a fine engraving of a Study of a Head, after Titian, reproduced by Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton in his Graphic Arts, 1882, and the later developments of the school of W. Small, the black and white artist, gave greater scope to the engraver, and made his labours of artistic value in interpreting the feeling of work in colour.
For about ten years wood engraving made a great
