Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

Various

Various

Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

“PALE CONCLUDING WINTER.”

With howling fury Winter makes his bound

Upon us, freezing Nature at a look.

He dashes out the sweet and dreamy hues

Of Indian Summer, so that where the eye

The golden softness and the purple haze

Beheld at noon, at sunset sees the mist

Darken around the landscape, and the ear,

Nestling upon its pillow, hears the sleet

Ticking against the casement, whilst within

The silvery cracking of the kindling coal

Keeps merry chime. The morning rises up,

And lo! the dazzling picture! Every tree

Seems carved from steel, the silent hills are helm’d,

And the broad fields have breastplates. Over all

The sunshine flashes in a keen white blaze

Of splendor, searing eyesight. Go abroad!

The branches yield crisp cracklings, now and then

Sending a shower of rattling diamonds down

On the mailed earth, as freshens the light wind.

The hemlock is a stooping bower of ice,

And the oak seems as though a fairy’s wand

Had, the past night, transformed its skeleton frame

To a rich structure, trembling o’er with tints

Of rainbow beauty… A. B. Street.

A HISTORY OF THE ART OF WOOD-ENGRAVING

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BY AN AMATEUR ARTIST

—

With regard to the antiquity and origin of this most beautiful and most important of the early Christian arts – most important, because to it can be traced directly the invention of typography, as it now exists, bringing knowledge and truth within the reach of all who desire to attain them – there has been much difference and dispute among the literati. After the second restoration of letters – I mean after the dull and dreary interregnum between the era of the Stuarts and the Georgian era of literature, dating from the commencement of the present century – there seems to have arisen a strange habit of referring every thing, the origin of which was not distinctly known, to eras the most remote. Not to be able to say such a discovery was made by such a learned German or Venetian, by such a celebrated Gaul or Briton, in such a town, in such a year, of such a century, was sufficient cause for the drivelers of the time – the best scholars of whom knew, like Shakspeare, little Latin and less Greek, assuming, nevertheless, the possession of the deepest classic lore – to assert point-blank that it was made by such a wonderful Chinese philosopher during the reign of Wu-wang, emperor of China, or such a remarkable Egyptian sage, in the reign of Tathrak or Amenophis; or, that it was in common use in the days of Pericles, or perhaps even of the later Roman emperors.

The general knowledge of the classic languages was then so rare even among the authors of those days, that the dictum of any dunce who grossly misconstrued a Greek or Latin text, or of any rogue, who chose to forge one in support of his theory – in those days a matter of daily occurrence – was, so far from being questioned, detected, refuted, and exposed, as would now be the case, within a week of its publication, quoted and requoted by successive schools of dunces, until it was received as a truth, and sent down as a grave authority to future generations.

Though no author of this day, thanks to the number and acumen of the literary and critical journals – we do not mean newspapers, which promulgate, not correct falsehoods – could originate a blunder, much less a forgery, with a possibility of escaping detection; still, careless and hasty compilers following what they deem authorities, without themselves referring to the original authority cited, are constantly reproducing falsehood, promulgating it, and giving to it weight as truth, when nothing is more averse from their intention than to do so.

In nothing is this more the case than in the very class of works in which of all others accuracy and truth are most requisite – are, indeed, indispensable – we mean what are now called