Having already noticed my beginnings, or first efforts, in engraving on wood; and as at that time this department of the arts was at the very lowest ebb in this country, and, I believe, also in every other country in Europe, it may perhaps be of some use, or at least may excite some curiosity, to know the part I took in renewing, or bringing into use, this to me new art, as far as I was able, with the slender means in my hands, and the many difficulties I had to contend with and surmount, before anything like an approach towards perfection could be arrived at. I ought first distinctly to state that, at that time, it never entered into my head that it was a branch of art that would stand pre-eminent for utility, or that it could ever in the least compete with engraving on copper. I ought also to observe that no vain notions of my arriving at any eminence ever passed through my mind, and that the sole stimulant with me was the pleasure I derived from imitating natural objects (and I had no other patterns to go by), and the opportunity it afforded me of making and drawing my designs on the wood, as the only way I had in my power of giving vent to a strong propensity to gratify my feelings in this way. In process of time, however, as I began to improve, and seeing the practical use printers were making of wood cuts, the utility and importance of them began to be unfolded to my view; and the more I have since thought upon the subject, the more I am confirmed in the opinions I have entertained, that the use of wood cuts will know no end, or, so long as the importance of printing is duly appreciated and the liberty of the press held sacred. The first difficulty I felt, as I proceeded, was in getting the cuts I had executed printed so as to look anything like my drawings on the blocks of wood, nor corresponding to the labour I had bestowed upon the cutting of the designs. At that time pressmen were utterly ignorant as to any proper effect that was to be produced; or even, if one of them possessed any notions of excellence beyond the common run of workmen, his materials for working were so defective that he could not execute even what he himself wished to accomplish. The common pelt balls then in use, so daubed the cut, and blurred and overlapped its edges, that the impression looked disgusting. To remedy this defect, I was obliged carefully to shave down the edges round about; and this answered the end I had in view. The next difficulty was worse to surmount, and required a long time to get over it; and that was, to lower down the surface on all the parts I wished to appear pale, so as to give the appearance of the required distance; and this process will always continue to call forth and to exercise the judgment of every wood engraver, even after he knows what effect his careful pressman maybe enabled to produce, from this his manner of cutting. On this all artists must form their own ideas. I think no exact description can be laid down as a rule for others to go by: they will by practice have to find out this themselves. While I was patiently labouring and contending with difficulties which I could not overcome, I was shown some impressions from wood cuts done long ago, with cross-hatching, such as I thought I should never be able to execute. These were from wood cuts by Albert Durer, and perhaps some others of his day, in the collection of the Rev. John Brand, the Newcastle Historian; and from these I concluded that Albert Durer must have had some very easy way of loading his blocks with such an useless profusion of cross-hatching, or he would not have done them so, unless, indeed, he had found out some easy means of etching the wood (or perhaps metal plates), quite unknown to me; but, if otherwise, I then, in changing my opinion, could think of no other way than that he must have cut his blocks on the plank or side way of the wood, on which it would be more easy to pick out the interstices between the squares, or the lozenge-shaped lines, than as I (at that time) thought it possible to do on the end way of the wood. One of these plank blocks, said to have been drawn by Albert Durer, was shown to me by my kind friend George Allan, Esq., of the Grange, Darlington. The drawing, which was done with great accuracy, seemed to me to have been done by a crow-quill, with a kind of varnish ink, the strokes of which, from their regularity, looked as if they had been printed from a well-executed copper plate, and transferred to the block. After labouring for some time, endeavouring to produce the like effect on my blocks, on the end way of the wood, not indeed to my satisfaction, I felt mortified in not succeeding to my wish; and I then began to think the impressions must have been printed from two blocks. This, indeed, I soon found to be quite easy to do, as well as being beautifully correct; and any artist may see this in a few minutes, by cutting parallel lines on a piece of wood, and from it taking, by his hand, an impression on a piece of paper, and then again inking the same cut, and printing it in the same way, either directly in a cross or in an oblique direction, upon the first impression. This can also easily be done, from two cuts, at a printing press, and is much easier to do, and better than the labour necessarily bestowed upon one cross-hatched block. When I had accomplished this, and satisfied myself that the process was both simple and perfect, as to obtaining the object I so much wanted, my c............