It seems to require no indulgence of the fancy or imagination to picture the benefits of education, and the consequences of ignorance are daily before our eyes. How are the one to be averted and the other obtained, is a question to which we can give but the leading points of an answer, and in briefly treating it we shall endeavour to avoid mixing in party disputes. If we consider the means of intellectual and moral (including in this term religious) culture, which appears to be at our command, the great deficiency which must immediately strike us is the want of competent teachers. The means of education of the higher and richer classes (that is to say of University education), are certainly, in respect of the Professors by whom they are distributed, apparently of the highest and best description: but judging them by their fruits, we must believe their influence to be contained within very narrow limits, and either that they do not embrace the one thing needful,' or are, from some cause, very inadequate to the worthy attempt of rescuing the country from the ignorance and wickedness which seem ready to overturn and engulph its institutions. "It is an epicurism of heart and mind-a lax, voluptuous, selfish spirit— which," says the writer of a powerful and temperate article in the Quarterly Review," is the plague and poison of this country. It is to this we nowe our evils :-Ireland with its extortions and debts-its impoverished and absentee landlords-its starving peasantry, and all the long catalogue of Irish evils:-In England, our mass of beggary, ripe for sedition and crime, a mass created chiefly by the blindness of greedy avarice, degraded more and more by its heartless cruelty, and which may one fearful day avenge upon this great empire her cold postponement of moral duties to questions of immediate gain in ledgers and taxes." Amongst the round of sciences which is taught at the Universities that branch of moral and political science, in which consists the safety of the state, seems to have been neglected. The noble, the wealthy, and those whose superior abilities have obtained for them like advantages, are not taught that the security of their honours and their wealth lies in the improvement of the condition of the people, and that the exertions directed to this object, and which are demanded by their interest, are commanded on higher considerations. If we look to the Universities only for a supply of competent teachers of History, Literature (ancient and modern), and the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, without discussing the nature and extent of the examinations which they have fixed as the test of competency and proficiency in Arts,† we are convinced by the experience of the narrow and superficial general education which prevails in even the more respectable schools, either that their Graduates, who devote themselves to the most respectable, worthy, and honourable office of tuition, are not sufficiently numerous to impress the stamp of their learning upon the rising generation; or that their learning, however sufficient for an examination for Degrees, is quite unequal to the office they assume. And, although some learned men and great philosophers may be found who have not been nursed in the bosom of Alma Mater, we imagine that no one will contend for a single moment that if the Graduates of the Universities considered as a class are not competent to the office of tuition, that there exists any other body of men which is better fitted. But if the present means of instruction in schools devoted to the education (so called by courtesy only) of the middle classes be deemed so in * No. CXXVI (Article, Oxford Theology.) ↑ We shall enter more particularly upon this subject in a future article. complete and deficient, in what terms shall we describe those which have hitherto been made available to the instruction of the poorer classes-Dame schools, and such like establishments? And how large a proportion of the population of the country are destitute of the slender means which even these afford of diverting their leisure hours from idle and mischievous misuse. Look to the dirty, the ragged, the immoral, the emaciated, and yet the hard-working population of some manufacturing district, and ask if they belong to the same class of beings as are described by the poet with a pathos and sublimity, which if not founded on something we all acknowledge to be true, were but idle words :— "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! " Rather with the poet, who was deploring an evil far less in amount and somewhat less dangerous (since in some measure it works its own cure and procures its own remedy), we should say- "And this is man! And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush, Is such a state of things to be endured? Is the wealth and commercial prosperity of our country to be the object that engrosses the attention of the community and the deliberation of our statesmen? Shall the names of those whose virtues or whose genius have raised us to a more durable rank among nations than have our riches or our power, serve only to gild the sepulchre or to adorn the victim? Whilst increasing our outward appearances of wealth and prosperity, surely we must not suffer this internal disease to extend its alarming ravages. We cannot pretend to detail plans of remedy for such a state of things, which we have (to the best of our belief) neither highly drawn nor extravagantly coloured; but plans will not be wanting, nor the means of carrying them into effect, whenever-firstly, the danger is appreciated. This must certainly be the case whenever the facts are examined; and we hope a clear insight into the extent of it may be obtained otherwise than at the expense of such lessons, and by the repetition of such outrages, as we have cited at the commencement of our article: secondly, whenever justice and benevolence triumphs over selfishness and avarice; when the rights of the poor are thought of as much importance, and are as much the care of the higher classes, as are their own, and when their wants are equally considered with their failings. But though we have not dealt with the details of the subject, we shall return to it, and endeavour slightly and to the best of our ability to supply a part of the deficiency. * We must not omit to notice the worthy efforts which have been made, both by churchmen and dissenters, by the establishment of Sunday-schools, and sometimes of day-schools, to wean those children and young persons whom they can prevail on to attend them, at least from bad and immoral habits. Little, however, can be done for children, who have this their only day of recreation from the toils of the week, deprived of all opportunity of healthy and cheerful exercise, nor can we expect young minds to endure the toil of two, and sometimes three, services in church or chapel, exclusive of two or three hours devoted to the acquisition of - generally their letters (i. e. the alphabet.) NO. III. ILLUSTRATED PAPERS ON WOOD-ENGRAVING. - MODERN HISTORY OF THE ART. -THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BEWICK. [Again presenting our readers with an instalment of the beautiful productions of modern engravers on wood with which these our historical papers are so fitly illustrated,-we resume our subject, commencing at a period when it may truly be said that WOOD-ENGRAVING was raised from the degradation in which it had long lain, to be placed upon the foundation to which its present excellence is to be ascribed.] THOMAS BEWICK, to whom the honour of this vigorous change is due, was born, on the 11th of August 1753, at Cherry-burn, in canny Northumberland. He was the son of a hardworking, respectable collier; his father renting a small "landsale" colliery, and Bewick, in his early youth, himself working in the pit. In due time he was sent to school, and, under a neighbouring clergyman, gained, as a day-scholar, some knowledge of reading and writing. These days of scholarship would appear to have left a strong impression on Bewick's mind, as, in many of his after works, sketches from spots in the neighbourhood of Ovingham, where his preceptor lived, may easily be recognised. Mr Jackson, a countryman and friend of Bewick's, gives a clever cut of the parsonage at Ovingham, with its rural church-the old square tower that greets the eye in every part of England-a cluster of houses half surrounded by trees, and "The clear-flowing Tyne, That winds beneath the 'parson's' garden-brae, With broad bright mazes o'er its pebbly way." Bewick, to the end of his long life, cherished the recollection of these early scenes, and, in letters written years after, refers to incidents which occurred in his school-days, with all the freshness of youthful feeling. After he left school, his father, wisely influenced by the growing taste of his son for drawing, apprenticed him to an engraver in Newcastle, named Beilby. Here he was engaged not in any artistic employment, but in executing copper-plates for doors, marking initials on sugar-tongs and on tea-spoons, and, as he himself said afterwards, "in engraving clockfaces, which were not in those days enamelled, until his hands were as hard and dirty as a blacksmith's, which almost disgusted him with engraving." But a fortunate chance first led him to wood-engraving. Dr Hutton, the mathematician, was at that time a schoolmaster at Newcastle, and engaged Beilby to engrave a number of diagrams for his work on Mensuration. Upon these blocks Bewick was employed for two years; and although, when they were finished, Beilby had little for him to do in the same line, yet he took every opportunity of improving himself in the new branch to which he had thus been introduced; and, upon the expiration of his apprenticeship, he came to the resolution of applying himself exclusively to this division of the art. With the view of exhibiting his proficiency, he executed several cuts; and, in 1775, he received a premium from the Society of Arts for one which he had forwarded to London. The subject was The Huntsman and the Old Hound,' in which may be discovered some traces of that study of nature which laid the foundation of his future reputation. A year afterwards, he went to visit some friends in Cumberland, and made a tour of the Lakes. With a stick in his hand and a wallet at his back, he travelled on foot through that delightful neighbourhood, the scenery making an impression upon his mind sufficiently strong to exercise an influence on his after life. Bewick was eminently a man of rural tastes, and when, a year afterwards, he came to London, he appears to have felt the greatest antipathy to city habits and usages. He spoke of the "Great Metropolis" in words of anything but admiration; and, in the smoke and din of the city, continually lamented the bright sky and fresh air of the country he had left. He called London the province covered with houses," and, in a letter to a friend, expresses wonder how any one could "let the opportunity slip of contemplating at ease the beauties of nature, so -bountifully spread out to enlighten, to captivate, and to cheer the heart of man. For my own part," continues Bewick, "I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley bank top than remain in London, although for doing so I was to be made the Premier of England." With these tastes and predilections, it is not to be supposed that he would remain long absent from the scenes to which he was so devotedly attached. Upon his first arrival, he obtained employment with a follower of the art which some of his admirers, with zeal exceeding their judgment, contend had been "longlost," and of which he is asserted to have been the "discoverer." engraver was T. Hodgson, the presumed author of the four cuts in Hawkins's History of Music,' and, for this person, Bewick cut a few blocks printed in A curious Hieroglyph Bible,' proofs of which Mr Jackson describes. Another engraver, named Cole, is also said to have employed Bewick, but no evidence is afforded of the truth of this assertion. This A year after his first arrival in London, he left it, and, on his return to Newcastle (1777), entered into partnership with his former master, Mr Beilby; his younger brother, John Bewick, becoming their apprentice. From this time to the end of his long life, he was occupied with the assiduous practice of the art so peculiarly his own. His first essay after he left the "smoke of the city' was the illustrations to an edition of Gay's Fables, published at Newcastle in 1779, and in these, as in an edition of 'Select Fables' brought out five years after, the progressive improvement of the artist is very evident. In these cuts he commenced his delineations of animals, birds, and foliage, by which he gained his after reputation. Before this time, the best engravers on wood had regarded the foliage introduced into their designs as unworthy of any attention, and in some cases they neglected it to a degree which bordered on the ludicrous. Trees lost their graceful outline, and, in place of waving lines of foliage, we had hard delineations which had no likeness to any earthly thing -none but themselves could be their parallel. The mere form of animals, too, is all that the older engravers seem to have contemplated; the natural expression Bewick was first to delineate. None more closely applied themselves to the graver during the hours appropriated to its employment, than Bewick; but when it was laid aside, it was his delight to watch the motions and study the habits of birds and animals in the open air, and in their natural freedom. The fields were his books, and he found a studio, not midst the sculptured triumphs of antiquity-not in the galleries of the wealthy, where the pictured glories of Italian art shed a lustre which our times can only strive to equal; but in the hedges and the brooks, away from the "busy haunts of men,' he referred to nature for the subjects he depicted. A laborious student in her volume, he found the perfection that he sought. An engraving, which many of his admirers regard as his master-piece, was executed in 1789. It is a homely subject-the Chillingham Bull-a subject addressed rather to the taste of the dwellers in the warm homesteads, and the frequenters of the fruitful markets of our country towns, 66 than those whose habits and feelings lead them to regard such things as beneath the proper dignity of art. Many opinions have been given with references to this early and certainly admirable work; but we think that the strictures of Mr Jackson approach nearest to justice. He says: It is certainly well engraved, and the character of the animal is well expressed; yet, as a wood-engraving, it will not bear a comparison with several of the cuts in the History of British Birds.' The grass and foliage of the trees are most beautifully expressed, but there is a want of variety in the more distant trees, and the bark of that in the foreground to the left is too rough. This exaggeration of the roughness of the bark of trees is also to be perceived in many of his other cuts. The style in which the bull is engraved is admirably adapted to express the texture of the short white hair of the animal; the dewlap, however, is not well represented; it appears to be stiff instead of flaccid and pendulous, and the lines intended for the hairs on its margin are too wiry. On a stone in the foreground he has introduced a bit of cross-hatching, but not with good effect, for it causes the stone to look very much like an old scrubbingbrush. Bewick was not partial to cross-hatching, and it is seldom to be found in cuts of his engraving. He seems to have introduced it in this cut rather to show to those who knew anything of the matter that he could engrave such lines, than from an opinion that they were necessary, or in the slightest degree improved the cut. This is almost the only instance in which Bewick has introduced black lines crossing each other, and thus forming what is called cross-hatchings." to One great point, as we shall hereafter show, in which wood-engravings excel, is in their capacity for giving great colour-strong shadows. Until the time of Bewick this effect had been obtained by an elaborate mode of engraving lines intersecting each other, denominated "cross-hatching. The process occupied much time, and, as Mr Jackson shrewdly remarks, it was doubtless to save his own labour that Bewick was first prompted to employ a method of producing it in an easier manner, and which eventually proved far superior to the older and more tedious one. This was by leaving those portions of the subject which were to be black untouched by the graver, and proceeding from this to the lights by a greater or less number of simple lines. With these few words, we will dismiss for the present this practical portion of the subject, which will more appropriately obtain attention when discussing the practice of the art. A year after the completion of his cut of the Chillingham Bull, Bewick published the work upon which he had been mainly engaged for five years previously the History of Quadrupeds' a volume which became at once eminently successful, three editions being called for in as many years, and the illustrations to which, from their natural character, extended the reputation of the author in all directions. Many years after the first publication of this book, the widow of the printer in whose office the impressions were taken, sought to lessen the value of Bewick by declaring, in a letter written to the magazines of the day, that he was neither the author nort projector of the work, being employed "merely as the engraver or wood-cutter." This assertion naturally drew from Bewick a reply, which affords glimpses of the mental origin of the History of Quadrupeds,' which are not only curious as connected with our subject, but as affording internal evidence of correctness, and of the early-begotten and longcherished intention, which, pursued with singleness of purpose to its ultimate accomplishment, displays the strength of character by which Bewick was eminently distinguished; a trait, it is almost needless to add, which appears requisite for the attainment of perfection in any branch of the arts. He says "From my first reading, when a boy at school, à six |