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A copper engraving (I continually say copper rather than steel, from love of the richness of line which characterized the old material), which the engraver absolutely draws with his own lines, no drawing at all on the plate except his own, has the dignity of a poetic translation. A wood-engraving from a washed drawing has the same merit, is a translation of as much, or of greater difficulty, since every line is unalterable. Copper has its preeminences, fineness and delicacy. I know not of any others. There are brilliant and atmospheric effects; above all, a freshness and painter-like touch, peculiar to wood, which on copper cannot be produced. Especially the character of the painter (oh, no! not as shown in brush marks) can be rendered in a way not approachable by copper. These are indications of art in engraving, the results at which an artist - engraver would aim, and by which alone, according to the degree of his success, he must take rank among artists.

I am not depreciating mere fac-simile work. Of that there is something to be said. A little volume, unfortunately long since out of print, an edition of Rogers's Poems, contains some designs by Stothard, drawn by him in simple outline, in pen and ink. Any boy nowadays would think he could cut such simple things. Clennell cut most of them; Thompson two or three. Clennell has reproduced Stothard's drawing; Thompson's, though excellently engraved, are Thompson's. It took the best artist even to do justice to a bare outline.

This may lead me fairly to speak of the qualifications of an engraver. And the first is self-forgetfulness. Perhaps

that is the only ground in which any excellence can have healthy growth toward perfection. I am sure that it is the one thing necessary for the engraver, for his own salvation as well as for the accomplishment of his work. Only that man will I call artist who can forget himself in his work. There may be what charity and not much precision of speech will call art along with self-display; but it will never be art of the greatest. With such artistic modesty and conscientious

ness, a man who studies what is proper for his work rather than what may be most admired by my few friends this afternoon, and who will do his best with or without the price he thinks he may deserve, will, if he have the artist nature, have some fair chance of success as an engraver; I do not say as a transmuter of wood into coin, but as a member of the great Guild of Art. If he care not for that end and finish, let him set up his multiple machinery, and as boss steam engine to the concern exploit the same for his increasing profit! What such gain shall profit a man I think I have read somewhere.

For him, however, who would take the way, the only way, of Art, steep and rugged it has been said, yet not without some flowers on the roadside, I would fain add a few truisms so they seem to me, the repetition of which at least

is harmless.

Self-forgetfulness at his work will not necessitate heedlessness of respect for his own manhood. It may be that some painter or patron may demand his adherence to the impossible or the undesirable. If it be possible for him to keep his place as translator rather than to become a machine in their unknowing hands, let him bear in mind the duty laid upon every artist to be true to his perceptions! There is no other ladder that can reach to greatness.

Indistinctness is not tone.

A poor engraving may please because the picture is liked for its subject, its sentiment, its effect, or anything else. That is no praise to the engraver.

Do not disdain delicacy, however difficult of attainment in wood! But do not prefer it before force! Combine the two when that can be done with propriety!

Do not be flattered when you are told that we should not have taken that for wood; we thought it must be steel!" Prefer essentials to non-essentials! Artifice is not art.

And again, to help you to that difficult self-forgetfulness, which should be the last as well as the first thing to be cared for by you, recollect that an

Five is another, -"five, I cast away;" - but one, O daisy, pray. He loves? then why not

Tell me of one, "Six, he loves." speak it? "Seven, she loves," - a fond love, will he seek it?

"Eight," both. Ah, daisy, flatterer, human-wise,

You read your sweet foretelling in my eyes!

"Nine, he comes." I hear a footstep now; I drop the daisy, while my heart beats low, Lest it should drown the music of his tread.

I'll wear a daisy wreath upon my head For "ten, eleven, twelve," and then we wed.

E. M. Bacon.

IV.

Presentiment.

WITH the morning light,
With the noontide bright,

There cometh a sense of ill;
In the dead of night,
In the moonlight white,

It haunts like a spectre still.

Through the doors of the heart, By some unknown art,

It steals with a noiseless tread; And a nameless fear, With its visage drear,

Peers after the spectre dread.

Fleeting Youth.

WITH my senses still keen to all pleasures and pains,

With a life-gladdening tide flowing full in my veins,

I call unto youth ere 't is fled,
Implore ere I mourn it as dead:
Life's morning, I fain would detain thee;
Detaining, forever retain thee!

For I know that the years will yet bring

unto me

A time when all bliss shall in memory be, When I yearn for the days that are fled, When I sigh for the youth that is dead. O Life, should there be no hereafter, Thou wert vain as an echo of laughter! Sylvester Baxter.

IN forecasting the destiny of any people from the stand-point of physiology, it is necessary to consider the three elements which, by their complex interactions, make up the character of men and of nations, - race, climate, and institutions. Of these three factors the latter must be a resultant of the first and second, though modified, more or less, by the character and institutions of surrounding nations. The coming American will be the product of the races that now occupy or are immigrating to our country; of our peculiar climate as it may be changed by time and civilization; and of our political, religious, educational, and social institutions as they have developed, or shall develop, during the process of the adjustment of race to environment. He who would know what manner of man the thirtieth century shall look upon in this land must analyze, with all the tests of science, these three streams, the confluence of which is to determine America's future.

Of these three streams race is the broadest and deepest, and flows with the strongest current, and long retains its own characteristics, in spite of the force of the streams with which it unites, as the waters of the Amazon are borne with such force into the sea that they can be detected many leagues from its mouth.

The races that have peopled America are at once the best and the worst of Europe. There is no evidence that on the whole the Greeks or the Romans were superior physically to the best of modern Europeans, or to their immediate descendants in this country; for, while new diseases and new varieties of disease have appeared, longevity has been on the increase all along the line of our civilization, and the capacity to endure protracted toil and extremes of temperature, and privations of food and repose and other bodily comforts, has probably never stood severer tests than in Europe

and America during the past two hundred years. If, in a comparison, it be allowed that a small body of Grecians may, through a variety of favoring influences, have climbed to loftier heights of artistic culture than the same number in any other age, yet it must also be allowed, without question, that the average culture of Europe and America is better than that of Athens or Rome.

America, then, embarks upon her future under the command of as good officers and crew as any ship of state that has yet been launched; the voyage, however, is to be amid storms which, while dreaded and sure to come, cannot be accurately predicted, and over seas as yet but partly explored.

In limited, historic time race is, then, the one great factor in determining the character and future of any nation, putting under its feet unfriendliness of climate, modifying or assimilating all human institutions. If in unlimited, prehistoric time race be the result of climate and the environment, yet in the short period in which man's existence on this earth is recorded any race, when once developed, preserves its characteristics for many generations in climates and under institutions of a directly opposite character. The Hebrews have gone to every clime, and have succeeded in all, or nearly all, everywhere maintaining the features and the character of their race: under all governments, surrounded by all forms of religion and superstition; in persecution, in exile, against social ostracism; shut out from many avenues of subsistence and comfort; under temperate, under tropical, skies, they are Hebrews still.

But while the general characteristics of race are preserved, special modifications develop rapidly under diverse climates and institutions. If the white population of this country could be transferred bodily to Central Africa, carrying with it all our institutions of government,