M. Laugier has not yet reached his full powers of maturity; but what he has done is remarkable for feeling and force.  His Daphne and Chloe, and Hero and Leander are early performances, but they are full of promise, and abound in excellences.  Colour and feeling are their chief merit.  The latter print has the shadows too dark.  The former is more transparent, more tender, and in better keeping.  The foreground has, in some parts, the crispness and richness of Woollett.  They tell me that it is a rare print, and that only 250 copies were struck off—­at the expense of the Society of Arts.  Laugier has recently executed a very elaborate print of Leander, just in the act of reaching the shore—­(where his mistress is trembling for his arrival in a lighted watch-tower) but about to be buried in the overwhelming waves.  The composition of the figure is as replete with affectation, as its position is unnatural, if not impossible.  The waves seem to be suspended over him—­on purpose to shew off his limbs to every degree of advantage.  He is perfectly canopied by their “gracefully-curled tops.”  The engraving itself is elaborate to excess:  but too stiff, even to a metallic effect.  It can never be popular with us; and will, I fear, find but few purchasers in the richly garnished repertoire of the worthy Colnaghi.  Indeed it is a painful, and almost repulsive, subject.  Laugier’s portrait of Le Vicomte de Chateaubriand exhibits his prevailing error of giving blackness, rather than depth, to his shadows.  Black hair, a black cravat, and black collar to the coat—­with the lower part of the background almost “gloomy as night”—­are not good accessories.  This worthy engraver lives at present with his wife, an agreeable and unaffected little woman, up four pair of stairs, in the Rue de Paradis.  I told him—­and as I thought with the true spirit of prediction—­that, on a second visit to Paris I should find him descended—­full two stories:  in proportion as he was ascending in fortune and fame.

The French are either not fond of, or they do not much patronise, engraving in the stippling manner:  “au poinctilliet”—­as they term it.  Roger is their chief artist in this department.  He is clever, undoubtedly; but his shadows are too black, and the lighter parts of his subjects want brilliancy.  What he does “en petit,” is better than what he does upon a larger scale.”  In mezzotint the Parisians have not a single artist particularly deserving of commendation.  They are perhaps as indifferent as we are somewhat too extravagantly attached, to it.  Speaking of the FRENCH SCHOOL OF ENGRAVING, in a general and summary manner—­especially of the line engravers—­one must admit that there is a great variety of talent; combined with equal knowledge of drawing and of execution; but the general effect is too frequently hard, glittering, and metallic.  The draperies have sometimes the severity of armour; and the accessories, of furniture or other objects, are frequently too highly and elaborately finished.  Nor is the flesh always free from the appearance of marble.  But the names I have mentioned, although not entirely without some of these defects, have great and more than counter-balancing excellences.