Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/416

376 artists and employing the best engravers, he set a good example, which was speedily followed by others. In 1839, Messrs. Hodgson and Graves had started a cheap periodical devoted to Art, under the title of the Art Union, intended chiefly as an organ of the print trade; but it was not till the year 1849 that this publication passed into the hands of Mr. Virtue, who changed the title to the Art Journal, and devoted it to the development of Fine Art and Industrial Art, with illustrations on steel and wood by the first artists of the day. The Art Journal, it is admitted, has done more than any private venture or corporate body to disseminate true ideas of Art in England. The Art Journal, though among the very earliest of those periodicals in which Art was brought to the aid of Literature, still towers proudly above all. Since its foundation, the Art Journal has presented the public with between eight and nine hundred steel engravings and above 30,000 engravings on wood.

No less than one hundred illustrated volumes were issued from Mr. Virtue's establishment, and for their production it was found necessary to erect a large establishment in the City Road. Almost every engraver of any reputation in this country has been employed on one or other of Mr. Virtue's illustrated works. Indeed, had it not been for the field of labour opened by the Art Union, in their yearly distribution of engravings, and for the encouragement held out by Mr. Virtue in the production of his illustrated works and the Art Journal, it is said that the art of line engraving would have quite died out in England; and for his services to the public, and, through them, to the profession, he is certainly entitled to be regarded as the first Art publisher of his time.