Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/67

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REVIOUS to the time of Dürer, wood-engraving in the North, as has been seen, was little more than a trade, and has its main interest to the scholar as an agent of civilization; in Italy it first became a fine art, a mode of beautiful expression. The Italians, set in the midst of natural loveliness and among the ruins of ancient art, had never wholly lost the sense of beauty; they may have paid but slight attention to what was about them, but they lived life-long in the daily sight of fair scenes and beautiful forms, which impressed their senses and moulded their nature, so that, when with the revival of letters they felt the native impulses of humanity toward the higher life stirring once more in their hearts, they found themselves endued with powers of perception and appreciation beyond any other people in the world. These powers were not the peculiar possession of a well-born class; the centuries had bred them unobserved into the nature of the race, into