Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/53

Rh gross vein, wholly disconnected with the text, and sometimes at strange variance with its spirit, are not uncommon. The engravings that follow this frontispiece represent the customary Scriptural scenes, and the series closes with two striking designs of the Last Judgment and of Hell. In the former angels are hurling pope, emperor, cardinal, bishop,

and king into hell, and in the latter their bodies lie face to face with the souls marked with the seal of God—a satire not unexampled before this time, and indeed hardly bolder than hitherto, but of a spirit which showed that Luther was already born. "It is no small honor for our wood-engravers," says Renouvier, "to have expressed public opinion with such hardihood, and to have shown themselves the advanced sentinels of a revolution." The engraving in this Bible tells its own story without need of comment; but,