Attelathe, and Coney. This primitive collection will moreover be regarded with additional interest, as having supplied to Gough, in the progress of his undertaking, information, the value of which is duly acknowledged in the preface to the second portion of his work. The mode of operation devised by Craven Ord and his friends will appear to the collector of the present times a most tedious and troublesome process. Sir John Cullum gives an interesting description of the outset of the party on horseback, "accoutered with ink-pots, flannels, brushes," &c., the proceeding being in fact a rude and imperfect attempt to obtain an impression by a process analogous to ordinary copper-plate printing. The brass was covered with printing ink, the surface cleaned as well as it might be, thick paper, previously damped, was laid upon it, and with the flannels, and such means of pressure as could be devised, the action of the rolling-press was imperfectly supplied, so that the ink which filled the incised lines was transferred to the paper. Of course the impressions, for impressions they were, not rubbings, were inverted, and many imperfections occurred in parts where the pressure had missed its effect: these were subsequently made good with the pen and common ink, sometimes even they were contented to use a very small quantity of printing ink, so that the whole design, transferred in very faint lines to the paper, was afterwards worked over with the pen, and an uniform effect produced, but at the expense of much time and labour. It were much to be desired that this collection, which has been rendered accessible to the public by the bequest of Mr. Douce, should be augmented, so as to form ultimately a complete series of the sepulchral brasses of England. Independently of the advantages which might be derived by the topographer or genealogist from ready access to such a collection, it would form a valuable exhibition illustrative generally of the progress of design in England, and especially of that branch of it which was preliminary to the art of calcographic impression. It is very remarkable that, during so long a period, plates, which in some instances display a skilful use of the burin, and work of very elaborate and delicate character, should have been executed in great numbers, capable of transferring impressions to paper, and yet that calcography should have at length originated in an artistic process of a wholly different nature, practised chiefly by the Italian goldsmiths, and termed niello, or opus nigellatum. The
