opinion best founded is, that engraving had its origin in Italy. Tomaso Finiguerra, a goldsmith of Florence, about the year 1460, discovered the method of taking off impressions from engraved silver plates with wet paper, which he pressed upon them with a roller. Andrea Mantigna, a painter, bethought himself of multiplying by that means copies of his own designs. From Italy the art travelled into Flanders, where it was first practised by Martin Schoen of Antwerp, of whose works there remain a very few prints, which are the most ancient engravings now known.

His scholar was the celebrated Albert Durer, who far surpassed nis master in abilities. He engraved with excellence in copper and in wood, and of his pieces a very great number have reached the present time. Considered as the first efforts of a new art, they have great merit. In some of those prints which he executed on silver and on copper, the engraving is elegant to a great degree. The immediate successors of Albert Durer were Lucas of Leyden, Aldegrave, and Sebald Behem, or Hisbens, who all engraved very much in the manner of Albert. In Italy, at the same time, Parmegiano had begun to etch some of his own beautiful designs, and is, by many, supposed to have been the inventor of the mode of engraving by means of aquafortis, which expresses the design of the artist with much greater freedom and spirit than the labored stroke of the graver, though its lines have less softness and delicacy: a combination of the two is, therefore, most happily employed by the modern artist, and is productive of an excellent effect, especially in landscape. In Italy, likewise, Mark Antonio and Agostino, contemporaries of Parmegiano, were successfully employed in making engravings from the works of Raphael. These engravings were then much sought after, and are yet in request on account of their antiquity; but in point of merit, and as giving an idea of the beauties of the original, they have been infinitely surpassed by the works of posterior engravers.

There is no art whatever, which, from its first discovery, has undergone so rapid an improvement as that of engraving. When we compare the prints of Albert Durer, or of Lucas of Leyden, with those of Goltzius, engraved about seventy years after, the difference is perfectly astonishing. But when we come down about eighty years farther, and examine the prints of Poilly, Audran, and Edelinck, we are ready to acknowledge a proportional improvement. From that time to the present, in some respects the advancement has been equally sensible, though in others not so apparent. It must be readily confessed that the landscapes of Woollet are greatly superior to those of Bolowert, Saddeler, and Bloemart; but it is a little doubtful whether the historical pieces of Strange, of Bartolozzi and Cunego, surpass those of Poilly, Edelinck, and Treij. This superiority has been achieved by Raphael Morghen.

The moderns, who have carried the use of the graver to a very

great height, and have confessedly much improved in the art of etching, have now laid aside one mode of engraving practised by the ancient artists, and brought by them to a very great degree of perfection-engraving in wood with different tints, which was performed by different plates. The inventor of this art was Ugo da Carpi, an Italian; and it was brought to great perfection by Andrea Andreani, of Mantua. The spaces of white and the washes of which the middle tint is composed, give to these prints all the softness of drawing; and some experiments have been made in the same way with different colors, which give these performances in some degree the effect of painting.

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As I shall not have another opportunity of particularly mentioning the arts dependent on design, it would be improper to quit the subject without taking notice of a mode of engraving different from all those I have mentioned, though its invention belongs to a period considerably later than that of which we now treat: I mean the mode of engraving in mezzo-tinto. It was invented by the celebrated prince Rupert, son of the elector Palatine, about the year 1650; and the hint was conceived from observing the effect of rust upon a soldier's fusil, in covering the surface of the iron with innumerable small holes at regular distances. Rupert, who was a great mechanical genius and virtuoso, concluded that a contrivance might be found to cover a plate of copper with such a regular ground of holes so closely pierced as to give a black impression, which, if scraped away in proper parts, would leave the rest of the paper white; that thus light and shade might be as finely blended, or as strongly distinguished, as by the pencil in painting. He tried the experiment by means of an indented steel roller, and it succeeded to his wishes. A crenulated chisel is now used to make the rough ground in place of the roller. This art has been brought to very high perfection. Its characteristic is a softness equal to that of the pencil, and it is therefore particularly adapted to portraits; and nothing except the power of colors can express flesh more naturally, the flowing of hair, the folds of drapery, or the reflection from polished surfaces. Its defect is, that where there is one great mass of shade in the picture, it wants an outline to detach and distinguish the different parts, which are thus almost lost in one entire shade; but in the blending of light and shade there is no other mode of engraving that approaches to it in excellence.

The age of Leo, though principally distinguished by the perfection of the arts of design, was likewise a period of very considerable literary splendor. Ariosto, Bembo, and Sadolet, divided the favor of Leo and the esteem of the public with Raphael and Michael Angelo. Guicciardini in the same period rivalled the best historians of antiquity, and Machiavel shone equally in history, politics, philosophy, and poetry. But the literary genius of this age will come to be more particularly treated afterwards in giving a

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connected view of the progress of literature and of the arts ar sciences from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of t seventeenth century.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SURVEY of the STATE of the PRINCIPAL KINGDOMS of Asra in the SixTEENTH` and SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: Selim reduces Egypt - Solyman takes Rhodes-subdues Hungary, Moldavia, and Wallachia-Selim II. takes Cyprus-Battle of Lepanto-Persians under Shah Abbas-Government and Religion-Tartars--India, early Particulars of--Aurungzebe-Brahmins -Divisions of Castes.

THE Turks, we have seen, in the middle of the fifteenth century, subverted the empire of Constantinople, which from that period became the imperial seat of the Ottoman dominion. In treating of that great revolution, I took occasion to offer some considerations on the government and political constitution of the Turkish empire-that great fabric of despotism.

The Turks proceeded to extend their conquests. Mahomet II. subdued a great extent of territory. Selim I. added new conquests. In the year 1515, he made himself master of Syria and Mesopotamia, and undertook the reduction of Egypt, which was then in the possession of the Mamelukes, a race of Circassians who had been masters of that country ever since the last crusade. The arms of Selim put an end to their dominion; but, what is a very extraordinary fact, he allowed the last of the Mameluke kings to govern Egypt in the quality of his bashaw; and these Mamelukes, though nominally under the dominion of the grand signior, continued in reality the sovereigns of the country, acknowledging but a very slender subjection to the Ottoman power.

Solyman, the son of Selim, who is termed Solyman the Magnificent, was a formidable enemy to the Christians and to the Persians. He took the Island of Rhodes in the year 1521. The knights of St. John were at this time in possession of this island, from which they had expelled the Saracens in 1310. They made a noble defence, assisted by the English, Italians, and Spaniards; but after a siege of many months were forced to capitulate. Solyman, a few years afterwards, subdued the greatest part of Hungary, Moldavia, and Wallachia. He failed in his attempt upon Vienna; but turning his arms eastward against the Persians, he made himself master of Bagdad and subdued Georgia. He concluded a treaty of alliance with the

French, which subsisted for two centuries. His son, Selim II., in the year 1571, took the island of Cyprus from the Venetians; and this industrious people were carrying on a brisk trade with the Turks at the very time that they were making this conquest. Genoa, Florence, and Marseilles were rivals with Venice in the trade of Turkey, for the silks and commodities of Asia. It is remarkable that the Christian nations have traded with the Ottoman empire to a very large extent, without its ever having been known that a Turkish vessel came into their ports for the purposes of commerce, in return for the vast fleets which they annually send to those of Turkey. All the trading nations of Christendom have consuls who reside in the seaports on the Levant, and most of them have ambassadors at the Ottoman Porte, while none are sent from thence to reside with other nations.

The Venetians, sensibly feeling the loss of Cyprus,-which, besides the advantages of its produce, was a most convenient entrepôt for their trade to the Levant and finding their own force insufficient for its recovery from the Turks, applied to pope Pius V. for the benefit of a crusade. The pope gave them more effectual aid, by waging war himself against the Ottoman empire, and by entering into a league for that purpose both with the Venetians and with Philip II. of Spain, the son and successor of Charles V. Pius, who was a good politician and a great economist, had amassed, in the course of his pontificate, such wealth as to render the holy see a very formidable power. The wealth of Philip II. was considered at that time as inexhaustible. A great armament was immediately fitted out, consisting of two hundred and fifty ships of war, with fifty transports. Don John of Austria, brother of Philip, (a natural son of Charles V.,) was admiral of the fleet. Historians compute that the number of men on board was fifty thousand. The fleet of the Turks, who had not been wanting in their preparations, consisted likewise of two hundred and fifty galleys. These powerful armaments met in the Gulf of Lepanto, near Corinth, and an engagement ensued, more memorable than any naval fight that had happened since the battle of Actium. All the ancient and all the modern weapons of war were used in this sea-fight, which terminated to the honor of the Christians. The Turks lost above one hundred and fifty ships; the number of their slain is said to have been fifteen thousand; and among these was Ali, the admiral of their fleet, whose head was cut off and fixed upon the top of his flag.*

Don John of Austria acquired by this signal victory a very high degree of reputation, which was still heightened by the taking of Tunis, about two years after. But from these successes the Christians, after all, did not derive any lasting advantage; for

*In the battle of Lepanto, Cervantes, as he informs us in his inimitable romance of "Don Quixo e," lost his left hand by the stroke of a Turkish sabre 42

VOL. II.

Tunis was very soon recovered, and the Ottoman empire was as powerful as before. The Turks, after the death of Selim II., preserved their superiority both in Europe and in Asia. Under Amurath II. they extended the limits of their empire into Hungary on the one side, and into Persia on the other. Mahomet III., the successor of Amurath, began his reign like a monster, by strangling nineteen of his brothers, and drowning twelve of his father's concubines, on the supposition of their being pregnant. Yet this barbarian supported the dignity of the empire and extended its dominions. From his death, which was in the year 1603, the Ottoman power began to decline. The Persians at this period became the predominant power in Asia, under Shah Abbas the Great, a prince who, in all his wars with the Turks, was constantly victorious. He gained from them many of their late acquisitions of territory; and effectually checking that career of success which had for several years attended their arms, he gave great relief to several of the princes of Europe, who at that time were scarcely able to defend their own dominions. Shah Abbas thus involuntarily shielded the European kingdoms from the fury of the Turkish arms, as we have seen that Tamerlane and Gengis-Khan had formerly been, in an indirect manner, the protectors of Constantinople.

Persia, under Shah Abbas, was extremely flourishing. This vast empire had, some time before this period, experienced a revolution, somewhat similar to that which the change of religion produced in Europe. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a new sect was formed by a Persian named Sophi, and his opinions were eagerly embraced by a great part of his countrymen, merely from the circumstance of thus distinguishing themselves from the Turks, whom they hated. The principal difference seems to have been that the reformer Sophi held Ali,” the son-inlaw of Mahomet, to have been the legitimate successor of the prophet; whereas the Mahometans generally acknowledged Omar the prophet's lieutenant. Sophi fell a martyr to his opinions, for he was assassinated by some of the opposite sect, in the year 1499. His son Ismael maintained his father's doctrines by force of arms; he conquered and converted Armenia, and subdued all Persia, as far as Samarcand; and he left this empire to his descendants, who reigned there peaceably till the revolutions in the last century. The conqueror, Shah Abbas, was the great-grandson of this Ismael Sophi.

The government of Persia is as despotic as that of Turkey; but there seems to be this substantial difference between the state of Turkey and of Persia, that the inhabitants of the latter enjoy their possessions with some security, for the payment of a small tax or land-rent to the government. The kings of Persia receive presents from their subjects, as the grand signior does; and according to Sir John Chardin's account, the king of Persia's new year's gifts amounted in those days to five or six millions of livres.