Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/725

 L I T L I T 701 the end of the stone, for which purpose the press requires to be set properly beforehand. The printer now relaxes the pressure, the table with the stone runs to its original place, the tynipan is put back, and the impression is carefully taken up from tha stone. The stone is then again wetted as before, inked in anew, the paper placed upon the stone, and further impressions are effected. When the stone is to be kept after the required number of impressions has been struck off, it should always be inked up with preserving ink, which is made by melting lard, tallow, and wax, in equal propor tions, with a quantity of printing-ink. When about to be used, this preserving-ink may be thinned with some oil of turpentine, thinly spread on a roller kept for this purpose ; it must then be properly turned on the slab ; the writing or drawing is washed out with oil of turpentine, the whole removed with a clean sponge, and the stone wetted and inked in with this preserving-ink. A few minutes afterwards, when the turpentine has evaporated, a thin solution of gum-arabic is spread over the stone, containing a little sugar-candy to prevent the cracking of the gum by change of atmosphere. The stone will keep any length of time; but the pre serving-ink should be renewed at least every twelve months. The printing of tint and colour stones is treated in the same way, only the rollers, varnishes, and colours are different from those used for ordinary black and chalk printing. The printing of this class of work requires great skill and taste. Many of the lithographic printers of London, Paris, Brussels, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, and Dresden are justly famed for their beautiful productions. An engraved stone is printed by using a small wooden tapper or tampon, either round at the sides, flat below, with handle at top, or square, with the corners rounded off. This tampon is covered several times with a very coarse blanket, or coarse thick firm cloth, fastened at the sides ; the ink is then spread very thinly on the slab, the tapper is properly tapped into it, the gum is removed from the stone, and the drawing is removed with oil of turpentine ; the stone is wetted, the tampon is tapped over the whole drawing, the stone cleaned with a bit of wet canvas, and finally a printing roller is passed once or twice over the stone, which removes all impurities; a damped sheet of paper is then placed on the stone, and the impres sion made as formerly explained. Some printers print engraved outlines or drawings done with thin lines entirely with the roller, which is a great saving of time ; other printers- again ink an engraving with a large shoe brush with long, stiff bristles which is rubbed on the ink-slab to give it the ink required -by brushing over the drawing in all directions. Paper. The proper selection of paper for lithographic printing when beauty of impression is a chief consideration, is of great im portance. Hand-made and hand-sized papers are objectionable, the materials used in sizing being frequently inimical to perfect litho graphic printing. Absorbent papers, such as India paper, plate- paper, half-sized plate-paper, and fine printing paper yield the best impressions ; common writing paper, hand-made writing, loan, or other hand-made English-sized papers should be used only when the work is for business or similar purposes. Since the invention of photography, and its wide appli cation to processes connected with art, artistic lithography, except in the way of colour printing, has been perhaps rather less in demand than formerly. Many of the finest British examples of lithographic art date from more than twenty to thirty years back, when artists such as J. D. Harding, Samuel Prout, Louis Haghe, Ghemar, William Simpson, and others were largely some of them almost exclusively engaged in its practice. Harding, although practising as a water-colour painter, devoted much of his time to lithography. The dexterity and brilliancy of his execution give to his works in this style a peculiar charm, altogether wanting in the more laboured productions of the professional lithographic artist. Of this quality in Hard- ing s drawings on stone, Mr Ruskin writes &quot;His execu tion, in its way, no one can at all equal. The best chalk drawing of Calame and other foreign masters is quite childish and feeble in comparison.&quot; Samuel Prout, also a water-colour painter, produced many admirable works in lithography. Mr Raskin s testimony may again be quoted : &quot; All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value, wholly unrivalled in power of composi tion, and in love and feeling of architectural subject.&quot; &quot; His lithographic work (Sketches in Flanders and Ger many), which was, I believe, the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all, numerous and elaborate as its various successors have been. Their value is much increased by the circumstance of their being drawn by the artist s own hand upon the stone.&quot; Louis Haghe s work on the Architecture of the Middle Ages in Germany and the Netherlands, Roberts s Holy Land and Egypt (drawn on stone by Haghe), and Simpson s drawings of the Crimean war may also be cited as excellent examples of artistic lithography. Lithographic studies of heads and figures by Julien of Paris, and other foreign artists, were at one time largely employed as copies by drawing masters ; the new system of teaching introduced of late years has almost put an end to their use for this purpose, and they are now less frequently met with. Although lithography is increas ingly employed for commercial and other purposes, artists of first-rate ability now seem, on the whole, to prefer other processes for the reproduction of their works. (G. RE.) LITHUANIANS, a people (about 3,000,000 in number) of Indo-European origin, which inhabits several western provinces of Russia and the north-eastern parts of Poland and Prussia, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and in the basins of the Niemen and of the Duna. Very little is known about their origin, and nothing about the time of their appearance in the country they now inhabit. Ptolemy mentions (lib. iii. chap. 5) two clans, the Galindte and Sudeni, most probably Lithuanians of the western branch of this nationality, the Borussians. In the 10th century they were already known under the name of Litva, and, together with two other branches of the same stem, the Borussians and the Letts, they occupied the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea from the Vistula to the Duna, extending north-east towards the Lakes Wierzi-yarvi and Peipus, south-east to the watershed between the affluents of the Baltic and those of the Black Sea, and south to the middle course of the Vistula (Brest Litovsky), a tract bounded by Finnish tribes in the north, and by Slavonians i elsewhere. The country which since that time they have continued ! to inhabit is flat, undulating, and covered by numberless small lakes, ponds, and wide marshes, which, though to a great extent drained during the last ten centuries, never theless still cover immense tracts of land. The costly work of artificial draining has been actively carried on dur ing late years, but in the south the marshes are disappear ing slowly. The soil, being sandy in the north, and a hard boulder-clay elsewhere, is unproductive. Thick forests cover it, and though considerable tracts have been destroyed by fires and by the hatchets of the budniki who during many centuries have cleared the most remote thickets, founding there their villages, while, later, wide forest regions, given by Catherine II. as gifts to her officials, have quite disappeared there still remain im mense tracts of land covered with nearly virgin forests ; thus, the Byelovyesh Pushcha covers no less than 550,000 acres of land on the level plateau G50 feet high, where tributaries of the Nareff and Bug have a common origin in marshes. These forests have played an important part in the history of the Lithuanians, giving many original features to their history, as well as to their mythology, poetry, and music. They protected them from foreign invasions, and have contributed to the maintenance of their national character, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of their history, and of their primitive religion until the 14th century. Their chief priest, the Krive-Kriveyto (the judge of the judges), under whom were no less than seventeen different classes of priests and elders, worshipped in the forests ; the Waidelots brought their offerings to the divinities at the foot of mighty oaks, and even during the 14th century an unextinguishable fire, the &quot;zincz,&quot; was maintained in the midst of the &quot;pushta,&quot;or &quot;pushcha&quot;; even now, the worship of great oaks is a widely spread custom in the villages of the Lithuanians, and even of the Letts. In the absence of great forests they worship isolated trees.