the stones must be chosen hard and clean, and prepared with a granular texture, which should vary according to the nature of the drawings, and even in the different parts of each, according to the delicacy or boldness of the lines. From its easy execu tion, the chalk manner has been greatly practised; and many highly finished drawings have shown of how great a degree of perfection it is susceptible. Ink drawing with the steel pen and hair pencil, has also been much cultivated, and is applicable to all kinds of writing and printing, and to drawings, where great nicety is not required; and may, in time, also be employed for the higher productions of art. The stones for this purpose must receive a very fine polish; and the ink must be thickened a little, to prevent its spreading on the stone prepared for carry ing it, by washing it with a solution of oil in spirits of turpentine, with soap water, or by any other means. In these drawings, the steel scraper for rubbing out any of the lines, which, in chalk drawings, would destroy the grain of the stone, is of great utility. With it we can scrape out the lines any number of times, give sharpness to their edges, or divide a line into any number of parts or dots. The scraper also enables the artist to imitate wood-cuts in lithography with great ease, by merely covering the stone with printing ink, and scraping it away where the plate is to be light; the finer lines and touches being then executed with the pen or pencil on this white ground. The method of making transfers, is one of the most important applications of lithography. The ink used for this purpose is the same as that used for drawing, and the paper requires merely to be sized, with a mixture of gamboge, with gum, starch, or glue. Of the drawings in the engraved style, one of the most striking kind is that where the drawing itself appears white on the dark ground of the plate,-an arrangement which is managed in lithography with great ease, and produces, in many cases, a very striking effect. The drawing is executed or transferred, with blackened gum-water, on a stone previously washed with a solution of weak aquafortis; and the drawing being dry, the roller is applied, and the whole surface of the stone covered with printing ink, which also adheres to the drawing so long as the latter continues dry, but the moment it is wetted, and rolled again with the same roller, it appears perfectly white and clean. In all these different methods, before any drawing is executed on the stone, all traces of any former design must be obliterated by rubbing down the stone till they disappear.

The drawing being executed, the next object is to prepare the stone for printing; by the application of acid, which is poured or floated over its surface, and afterwards of gum-water,

a process sufficiently simple, yet most essential to the production of good impressions, and therefore requiring to be done with care. The acid should be diluted with about 100 times its weight of water, but varying in strength for different stones and drawings. If too strong, it carries off the delicate lines of the drawing, and if too weak, the drawing imbibes too much printing ink, which accumulates on the stone, and soils the impressions. The use of the acid, according to Senefelder, is chiefly to prepare the stone for receiving the gum-water, which repels the printing ink still more effectually than pure water. According to the Manual, the object of the acid and gum "is first to clean off the dust which, in graining or polishing the stone, may have filled up its pores; secondly, by corroding slightly the surface to destroy those small greasy particles which might by accident have adhered to the stone, and might thereby soil the impression; thirdly, by increasing the pores of the stone, to enable it to imbibe wet with more facility; fourthly, to render the chalk or the ink insoluble in water, by means of the acid which unites itself to the alkali contained in them; in fine, the gum-water is poured on the stone to fill up its pores, and hinder it from receiving the printing-ink where it ought not."

The stone being thus prepared, is ready for the press, and it is now that the greatest difficulties in lithography begin to ocBut we must refer, for the details of the process, to the above works, where the various processes are described with minuteness, together with the precautions to be observed, the errors to be avoided, and the remedies to be used. We may only remark, in general, that the operation is entirely similar to that of the common type-printing with the ink-roller, only that between the throwing off of the successive impressions, the stone is regularly wiped with a sponge moistened in gum-water. The pressure also required for stone impressions, is much greater than with types, and perhaps even exceeds what is necessary for engravings. This circumstance has introduced into lithography a peculiar kind of press, termed the scraper. The stone, together with the frame in which it is fixed, is drawn by force under the edge of a board or scraper, which is strongly pressed against its surface,-a skin of leather being interposed between them. The friction here, and consequent waste of power, must be enormous; and the whole machine seems to be but a rude, unskilful, and imperfect contrivance. The rolling press already mentioned, as used by Mr. Ruthven, works with far less power, with much more facility, and throws off impressions with equal perfection. It cannot fail, therefore, we imagine, to prove a valuable acquisition to the lithographer. Instead of being dragged under a scraper, the stone and its frame are here made to pass between two rollers, which are not, however, fixed and immoveable, either up or down, as in the ordinary press of

engravers, so that the copper-plate, once entered, cannot be drawn back, but is carried onward till it comes out at the opposite side of the press,-an arrangement, in many respects, very inconvenient; but one of them can be raised or depressed with the utmost facility, and can thus be made to press against the interposed stone with greater or less force, or with no force, at all. The stone, therefore, being carried forward under the required pressure till a proof is obtained, it is instantly relieved from this pressure, and drawn back with ease to be gummed and inked for the succeeding impression.

ART. V. Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq. begun by himself, and concluded by his Daughter, Maria Edgeworth. 2 vols. 8vo. Pp. 890. London, Hunter. 1820.

WE may safely say, that from the very singular circumstances in which this work is given to the world, from its character distinctly two-fold, and aspect manifold, we have experienced, in treating of it, a degree of perplexity to which we have been strangers during the course of our labours. Mr Edgeworth, as introduced to our acquaintance by himself, we hesitate not to say, we dislike. The same Mr. Edgeworth presented by his daughter, we can esteem and even admire. His own portion of the memoirs, and the life which that portion embraces, appear to us alike to offend against good taste and good feeling; while his daughter embalms her father's memory, by a tribute displaying even more than Miss Edgeworth's usual grace and dignity. When perusing the continuation of her father's history, we were embarrassed between our new impressions, and our previous unfavourable verdict, till dislike was changed, as by a charm, into respect; and we were visited by something like compunction for that judgment which we had intended to pronounce on his character. It is our sincere wish, indeed, that Miss Edgeworth alone had been her father s biographer; or, at least, that she had so far stretched the authority of an editor, as to have substituted the third person for the first; and, by that simple and harmless expedient, rescued his memoir from the appearance of repulsive egotism. We are certainly surprised it did not occur to her, that her father was by far too meritorious a man to be endured in a detail of his own life; that he did too many able things, and said too many witty, made too many clever discoveries, and performed too many praiseworthy actions, to leave him a chance

for the reader's favour, when he himself is his own recorder We avow a strong disinclination,-and we avow it as a pledge of our impartiality,-to occasion to Miss Edgeworth the slightest pain, in our freer treatment of a subject, to her so grave and so sacred. But she has herself made us so much esteem her father's real character, in that portion of his life, too, when character is most important, in his manhood and old age, that we are relieved from our self accusation, and perhaps hurtful delicacy, when we censure the faults, and smile at the absurdities of his youth, obtruded as they are on our view by his own unadvised details. Lest the reader shall censure much in the first volume, and laugh at more, we think it tair to premonish him, that the man whose earlier history he reads, and almost discredits, who appears to him vain, egotistical, and often absurd, is, nevertheless, destined, on the best authority, to take a place in his favour as an excellent husband and father; a firm friend, and delightful companion; a disinterested patriot, and an enlightened philanthropist.

The Memoirs by Mr. Edgeworth commence with a brief history of the Edgeworth family; their English origin, (Edgeworth or Edgeware in Middlesex) and their migration to Ireland in 1583. An enumeration follows of the monks and bishops who adorned the name, and of the baronets who were not, but ought to have been, created in the family. One knight, however, at least, it can claim; for it is on record that Charles II. did one day catch, straying in England, a certain Irish John Edgeworth, and much against his will, (knighthood always being against the will,) threw the honour over him, much, we suppose, as a wild colt is run up into the corner of a field and bridled. This court favour does not stand unexplained. Lady Edgeworth," in the bloom of youth and beauty," is presented; and, as a matter of course in that profligate court, is insulted. The lady will not return to such a presence; and so the honour of knighthood is thrown away!

Mr. Edgeworth's mother was daughter of Samuel Lovell, a Welsh Judge; who was son of Sir Salathiel Lovell, recorder of London; and in that office at the time of the trial of the seven bishops. in the reign of James II. Losing his memory in his old age, he was facetiously called the obliviscor of London; and is said to have answered, on one occasion, to a petulant pleader, who told him that he had forgotten the law: "Young man, I have forgotten more law than you will ever remember.' The Welsh Judge must have been a very stately personage. "My grandfather, the Welch Judge, travelling over the sands near Beaumorris, as he was going circuit, was overtaken by the night, and by

the tide; his coach was set fast in a quick-sand; the water soon rose into the coach, and his register, and some other attendants, crept out of the windows and mounted on the roof, and on the coach-box. The Judge let the water rise to his very lips, and with becoming gravity replied, to all the earnest entreaties of his attendants, I will follow your counsel, if you can quote any precedent for a Judge's mounting a coach-box." Vol. i. P. 19. Omitting all Lady Edgeworth's anecdotes for a period of ninety years, and five reigns, as not being an essential part of his proper biography, Mr. Edgeworth arrives at his own birth in Pierrepoint Street, Bath, in 1744. He recollects much of his own infantine history,-almost his being nursed, or rather starved, by two successive worthies with the appropriate, but very singular names of nurse Self and nurse Evil!-and of the agreeable surprise, which once befel him, of a temperate lecture from his mother, on restraining the angry passions, instead of a flogging, for launching the red-hot heater of a smoothing iron at his elder brother. 66 My wish," said she, " is to teach you to command your temper; no one can do that for you so well as you can "do it for yourself." These words Mr. Edgeworth never forgot; and they often, though not always, occurred in after life to compose his mind when ruffled by passion; as he avows it was too apt to be. Mr. Edgeworth, as a second son, was much left to nature in matters of health and habits; and educated, in the first instance, with a view to commerce. But succeeding, by his brother's death, to the primogenitureship, his value experienced a proportional rise; and, in order to fit him for the squiralty and the bar, he was muffled up, and aired out, and dosed with spring physic, all in conformity to the dicta of the humoral pathology then in vogue.

66

Mechanics formed one of Mr. Edgeworth's most favoured pursuits, from his boyhood to the close of his life. At a very early age this taste was elicited, by a visit to a gentleman in Dublin, who made electrifying-machines and orreries for his amusement. In 1752 Mr. Edgeworth was sent to a great public school at Warwick, where the pestiferous custom of fagging prevailed, (as, wonderful to relate, it still does at schools in enlightened England!) and he had his share of the ineffable suffering and deplorable example of that most execrable of tyrannies. Poor Cowper shuddered in his manhood when he thought of his "tormentor" at school, above whose shoe-buckles he never dared to raise his eyes! Let any one read the passage which follows, and plead, if he can, for a system from which such an act, as is described, could arise once in a hundred years!

"I had been accustomed to the affection of all my family at home, and was totally unacquainted with that love of power and of tyranny, which seems almost innate in certain minds. A full grown boy, just ready for college, made it his favourite amusement to harass the minds, and torment