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bolder parts being etched. The plate is laid on a firm table, which has a flannel cloth upon it to prevent the copper from slipping. An instrument called a groundingtool, provided with teeth, is then applied to the plate, and rocked backwards and forwards in every direction over its surface, so as to cover it with fine indentations, care being taken not to allow the tool to cut twice in the same place. When this operation is finished, the plate is found to be so engraved that an impression from it would present a uniformly black surface. The engraver now resorts to the scraper and burnisher, and presses down or rubs out the roughness of the copper, over that part of the surface where the figures are to appear, obliterating the ground for the lights and leaving it for the shades. Great care must be taken in this part of the operation, to make the gradations from shade to light extremely delicate, as, otherwise, the effect of the piece would be much injured. While speaking of mezzotinto engraving, it seems worth while to correct a prevalent errror. It is generally supposed, that an acid is employed to corrode the copper for this branch of art; but this is not the case. Engraving, when acid is to be used, is called etching, a process which we have already described.

This mistake with regard to the use of acid in mezzotinto, may not improbably have grown out of the commonly received account of the invention of this style of engraving. The merit of first using it is attributed to Prince Rupert. Horace Walpole, in his "Catalogue of Engravers," digested from the manuscript of Vertue, says, that, as Prince Rupert was going out one morning from his residence at Brussels, he observed a sentinel very busy with his fusil. On inquiring what he was doing, the man showed him, that the night dew had made some spots of rust on the piece, which he was trying to scrape and polish away. On examining it, the prince perceived something like a figure eaten into the barrel, with innumerable little holes close together like the chased work on gold and silver, part of which the man had already scraped away. It immediately occurred to him, that, by covering a plate with such little holes, so that it would give a black impression, and then scraping away part of them, the smooth portions of the plate would leave the paper white. He communicated this idea to Vaillant, a painter whom he maintained; and after many experiments they contrived a steel roller with teeth, which could cut the plate in every direction; and it was then easy to scrape away the roughness where the light was to fall.

This account, however, seems to be incorrect; for the Baron Heineken, in his "Idée Générale d'une Collection complette d'Estampes," speaks of a print engraved in mezzotinto by Colonel de Siegen, an officer in the service of the Landgrave of Hesse. It is a portrait of Amelia Elizabeth, Princess Regent of Hesse-Cassel, which is inscribed in one corner, "L. de Siegen, inventor, fecit, 1643." Now it does not appear that Prince Rupert pretended to have made this discovery till nearly twenty years after the date of Siegen's print; for Evelyn mentions, in his Diary, under March 13th, 1661, that Prince Rupert had just shown him the new way of graving called mezzotinto. Heineken thinks that

Rupert must have learned the art from Colonel de Siegen.

(To be concluded in our next.)

I AM often disposed to sum up all my philosophy in the sim. ple precept, "See things as they are." If I were to reduce

my efforts to a single aim, it would be to live "in reality;" to be rid of the phantasms and illusions of life. Mankind seem, to my view, so little aware of the realities in and about them, that to this, their most prevailing error, I ascribe their greatest misfortunes. I behold the world in pursuit of gilded phantoms, in love with shadows, and I ask if there is, indeed, nothing real, substantial, intrinsic, to embrace. I behold man the sport of chance; his character the result of adventitious circumstances. I see him truckling to the world; dependent upon its capricious charities for his happiness; and I see him become the image of its frown. I see him in the hot chase for wealth, station, fame, and either sinking on the course, or dropping for ever from his impotent grasp the prize, but just now, and so hardly, won. And I ask again, "Is there no reality; nothing permanent, nothing sure, which man can obtain? Is he, alas! the creature of times and situations; more transitory than the world, and its slave? Is happiness a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession?"

It

To live in reality, is to keep constantly before the mind, as the guide of life, the sober convictions of the understanding. It is to know at all times, what we know surely, at some. is to feel our convictions, and to give their relative importance to every object, which we know belongs to it, and which are of infinite reality and worth.

I know that I have a soul; that it is immortal; that its

highest happiness depends upon its purity; that its worth is beyond all account; that it is capable of endless improvemens, and that its purity and progress are committed to my care. Shall I forget or neglect this truth, because I have appetites, and the world has pleasures?-because the trust demands watchfulness and industry, and because indolence is enticing? Shall I dim this glorious reality with the reeling eye of sensuality and passion? Shall I delude myself with the fancied permanency and sufficiency of the world's delights? Shall I strive to reason away what I know, and make the uncertainty of life's duration an uncertainty of its end? Shall I make my own and my soul's interests separate concerns, and evade its demands, soothe its clamours, and cheat it of its sustenance; and live, with what poor peace I may, with this mysterious, inward something, this different self, that ever dogs my steps, and with shrouded form and hollow voice, blames my ways, warns my councils, and curses memory.

The same questions, which are their own answer, might be put with regard to the lofty relations of man to God-to futurity. Can a man be said to live in reality, who regards these so carelessly, as to surrender his highest privileges for the paltry indulgence of passion, more immediate, but of infinite worthlessness?

When I ask to live in reality, I do not so much pray for a deeper conviction of the great truths of life and religion-for I think that myself and a good portion of the world believe them fully-as for that self-possession of soul, that dignity of mind, which never loses sight of its lofty relations; which permits not the pleasures of the world to beguile it of its gaze at reality. We need that fixedness and earnestness of view, which no allurements can distract; no mists bedim; no shadows deceive; no spectres scare. We need the courage to look the realities of life full in the face, note their features, and recognise their acquaintance, for ever. If the world is

indeed a stage; if we all sit gazing but upon painted boards, diamonds of glass, and paper crowns, with vulgar men and women for kings and queens, the light of fœtid tallow for the illumination of heaven, and horns, and trumpets, and fiddles, for angelic choirs, let us amuse ourselves with the exhibition, but without forgetting that it is not real; that we are not indeed in the regions of bliss and peace; that it is all a fleeting show. Let us look, now and then, at least at the spectacle by day-light, and strain our eyes, if need be, to see through the golden foil, and the tinsel drapery, of mock royalty. Let us

not forget, that the sun in heaven is worth, countless times, all the beams that ever streamed from the torch of art, and that the green earth outvalues, by more than can be told, all the Elysian fields that fancy and cunning ever devised.

I willingly enter the lists with all whose art it is to deceive the world, and whose policy supports the source of its delusion, by glorifying a false imagination. The "matter-of-fact man," in the true use of that language, is mine, before all the poets. Imagination, when devoted to its native purposes, is divine; and he who lives in reality, needs it, and has it, most. If imagination is that power which tricks out in borrowed and unsubstantial finery the nudity and homeliness of all things present, and thus decoys the affections of man toward unsatisfying and transitory objects; if it teaches him to transform tremendous and ever-present realities into dim and distant shapes, lost in the importance which it lends to the unsubstantial yet unspiritual forms that flatter his passions, and gratify his appetites, then it is the greatest foe to human happiness.

Not such the beneficent goddess that befriends the man of reality; who strives to see things as they are, and to give their due importance to his respective relations to God, the world, and his own nature. Imagination is the genius of Faith. She embodies and makes alive and present, distant, passive, and impersonal objects. She transports us to the golden streets of the heavenly city. She bears up the fervent spirit upon her downy and rapid wings, and sets it down at the very gate of heaven. She assists us to rob death and the grave of their natural and mortal horror, by presenting to the mind the beauty, purity, and peace, of a life hereafter. She traverses ocean; pierces the past, and fastens her wings to unfledged thought, till it mounts and rises into form and presence. This is reality,

During all the time of the foregoing reflections, the play had been going on; the actors came and went, in due time and succession; the scenes changed; the music struck up, and pit and galleries clapped their hands, and shouted. Kings were deluded and slain; lovers were thwarted and miserable; Hate planned; and Revenge accomplished. The whole matter was declared to be well done, and the papers said it was a wonderful performance. My evening's employment, though I had a good right to look at the pageant, having paid my admittance fee, was the foregoing reflections, which I have attempted to write out, for the benefit of the reader.

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37

AN AMERICAN TALE.

It was during the reign of Anne, of blessed memory, and while the blue laws executed wholesome judgment upon Connecticut sinners, that Jerry Smith sought quiet seats, and safe retreat, from the persecution that afflicted a man who had kissed his cousin on a Sunday. Wethersfield lost, and the wet sands received him. The people of the classic shores of Jerusalem, and Babylon, and Oyster-bay south, wondered and wondered what could have induced Jerry to go down to that unpeopled, barren spot, to live.

:

Raccoon beach is a ridge of sand. It runs from its western point, seven miles south of Babylon, where Uncle Sam has lately built a light-house, thirty miles due east, averaging three fourths of a mile in breadth. It is one of those insular breast-works, which nature has thrown up, to protect that ancient and respectable country, called Long Island, from the incursions and ravages of the southern tempest. On its northerly side lies a smooth quiet bay its southern border is lashed by the ocean. A mere nutshell of a skiff may ride securely in the bay, but woe betides the pennant that floats over the foam of the inlet! The surface of the beach is diversified by irregular hills. A gloomy forest of pines has grown up near its centre: and with this exception, scarce a sign of vegetation appears. Myriads of quackes and crows share their solemn roost upon the aforesaid trees, the descendants of happy ancestors, who were rent-free, undisturbed tenants of said gallinary, when Jerry's skiff touched the strand.

Jerry Smith knew what he was about, when he put up his Esquimeaux-like hut on the side of one of the beach hills. To be sure, it was cold, and exposed, and barren; and it was, moreover, very unsociable to stay there all alone: but what of that, if he could make himself, in two or three years, as rich as old pirate Jones? And, after all, he was not so much alone, neither. For there was the bay full of eels, and crabs, and clams, and the surf was sparkling with striped bass, and the air and the water were vocal with the hawnking, and crucking, and perutting, and screaming of geese, and brant, and broadbills, and oldwives, and cormorants and hell-divers, and all the other varieties of the anseric and anatic families. At this early period, too, before too much civilization had unpeopled the land of its rightful lords, the bays of Long Island were JULY, 1840.