illustration, are all who deserve mention. Their engravings are inferior to the productions of previous artists, and after their death the art in Germany fell into speedy and irretrievable decay.
The work of the wood-engravers who were imbued with the German spirit exhibits the same excellences and defects as other German work in art. It is characterized by vigor principally, and in its higher range it has great value, because of the imaginative and reflective spirit by which it was animated; in its lower range, as a portrayal of life and manners, it derives from its realism an extraordinary interest. Its great deficiency is its lack of beauty, and is due to the inborn feebleness pf the sense of beauty in the German race; but, notwithstanding this deformity, German wood-engraving was invaluably useful in its day in the cities where it became so popular, because it was so widely and variously practised, and entered into the life of the people in so many ways with an effective influence of which it is difficult to form an adequate conception. It facilitated the spread of literature and helped on the progress of the Reformation to a degree which is little recognized; it disseminated ideas and standards of art, and made them common property; and, finally, it prepared the way for the great master who was to embody in wood-engraving the highest excellence of art and thought.
