translation of Senefelder's work, established
printing-presses, purchased a stone quarry in
Germany, and devoted himself heart and soul
to the encouragement and improvement of
the art. Plate engravers, painters, stanch old
Tories, and objectors on principle, abused it in
a frantic manner. It was heretical, abominable,
destructive. The solemn, awful, inexorable,
literary Rhadamanthus, the dread " Quarterly
Review," itself, sitting imposingly on its curule
chair, in ambrosial big-wig and high-heeled
shoes, promulgated edicts against the new-
fangled invention; and, in a review of
Captain Franklin's Narrative of his Polar
Expedition, solemnly warned the public
against the " greasy daubs of lithography."
"It's all very well in its way; but it
must be kept within its proper limits."
Proper limits! Lithography, after all, only
shared condemnation with railroads; and
both have so far kept within their proper
limits as to spread from London to Seringapatam,
from Paris to New Zealand, from
Dublin to Sydney. As to the British Government,
it condescended to notice lithography
and to patronise it, in the second year of its
introduction to this country. The
condescension and the patronage were, however,
confined to the imposition of an almost
prohibitory duty on the importation of the
very material without which there could be
no lithography;—the stones! To equalise
the burden after a very Hibernian fashion, it
immediately took off the protective duty on
foreign prints; and thus threw into the hands
of foreigners what before had given bread to
thousands throughout the British empire.
This was, it must be remembered, at the
same time that the French, Austrian, and
Russian Governments were sending agents to
Munich to examine into and report upon the
merits of lithography.

If I have been prolix on the subject of the
discovery and early struggles of lithography, it
is not because I have not anything to say on
the actual processes as now carried on. Let
us step into Great Queen Street, Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and have a peep at a large
lithographic establishment.

Up a court, shady and secluded—at the corner
of which stands a pensive goat, browsing on
the fragments of a dilapidated hearth-rug—is
the door leading to the workrooms of the
establishment we want. Staggering before
us in the sunshine, is an individual of Herculean
build, bearing on his back a ponderous
stone, the weight of which is sufficient to crush
three ordinary men, but which only makes
him bend and sway a little as he turns the
corners. A swing-door admits us into a large
vestibule, cumbered throughout with stones
of all sorts and sizes. These are the raw
material for stone pictures, just arrived from
the banks of the Danube, from Turkey, and
from India, where, in the Deccan, lithographic
stones are plentiful. The Atlas, bearing the
big stone on his back, brings us to the grinding-
room. Here, over large troughs of water, the
stones are ground, grained, and polished for
the different styles of lithography in which
the drawings they are to bear on their surface
are to be executed. They have been sawn to
a proper size and thickness abroad, and are
now tested with a straight-edge, to secure
their being unerringly level. For graining and
polishing, two stones are placed face to face,
and water, mixed with silver-sand, being
sprinkled between them, are rubbed together
—the upper stone being moved in a circular
direction—till a proper grain is given. The
quality of the sand is carefully attended to, for
a grain coarser than usual would cover the
stone with scratches, and give the stalwart
German workman who is " graining " the
labour of commencing his work from the
beginning over again. For ink-drawings, the
stones, after being rubbed together with water
and sand, are washed with water to get rid of
the sand, and zealously polished with Water-
of-Ayr stone or fine pumice. In this case it is
requisite that they should serve, on demand,
as a substitute for that boot of Hessian build,
which the nobleman or gentleman whom Mr.
Warren knew (but whom I never was enabled
to recognise) was wont to use as a shaving-
glass. In other words, holding your eye
close to the stone, you should be able to see
your face clearly reflected. Stones from which
impressions have already been taken, and
from which no further are required, are
prepared for fresh use, by being rubbed with
another stone and water, until all traces of
the former drawing have disappeared. They
are then regrained or repolished. Great
care, the grainer tells me, is requisite to
avoid any particle of the grease-imbued
portions of the former drawing remaining. The
stone is so attached to adipose matter, and
retains it with such tenacity, that chalk or
ink marks will yet hold, long after the colour
has disappeared. There was an instance, the
Teuton tells me, a short time since, where a
stone—apparently a virgin one, but which had
been used before, and rubbed down, was
wanted for a view of the Licensed Victuallers'
fête, crowded with figures on a very small
scale. The first dozen prints were worked
off to the satisfaction of everybody; but
suddenly, to the horror and astonishment of
the pressmen, above the Lilliputian Licensed
Victuallers appeared a Brobdignagian spectre
of Mademoiselle Taglioni, in the saltatory
ecstasies of the Bayadère. The stone had
previously held a portrait on a large scale of
the danseuse, and the printing-roller had
insidiously rolled his old acquaintance into
life again.

Leaving the grainer vigorously employed
in effacing an effigy of Field-Marshal Blucher,
we ascend, through room after room, where
busy presses are at work. We are struck
by the prodigious number of stones, not only
being printed from, but which are piled in
every corner, and ranged on shelves and in