The Book of Illustrious Mechanics of Europe and AMerica

opposite, a merry youngster traces a grotesque profile. By the simple dress, the animated face, the little cap placed negligently on the side of the head, and the general appearance of good will and mischief, you may easily recognise the children of the lower classes.

These are the sons of mechanics, destined for mechanics themselves, who go to the Bachelier school to study drawing.

It was for this class that Bachelier founded his free drawingschool, in 1763, spending upon it 60,000 livres, economized from his own private fortune. He hired the old college of Autun, in the Rue Saint André des Arcs, and in 1766 opened with fifteen hundred pupils. One year afterwards, when its success was certain, the king gave him 1,000 louis, and granted him letters patent. Princes, courtiers, men of the world, all classes imitated the example of the monarch; and voluntary subscriptions, joined to a slight tribute from masters and apprentices, formed a revenue of 45,000 livres, which provided more than fifteen hundred pupils with the necessary instruction.

"If we consider," says a biographer, "the influence exerted by it for more than half a century upon the mechanic arts, this school, established by Bachelier, has done great things for France."

The manufactory of Sevres owes its first progress to Bachelier, who directed it for forty-four years, introducing many reforms in art and taste. He not only assisted Caylus to reproduce the encaustic painting of the ancients, but also discovered another species of encaustic, used by the Greeks, to preserve marble statues from the injuries of the weather.

BOOKBINDING-LITHOGRAPHY.

OME pages not without honour to the mechanic arts, are furnished by the annals of French emigration. Among the noble families who were obliged to leave their country, many could be mentioned, who, stripped of all their property, were obliged

to have recourse to manual labour; thus

verifying the almost prophetic justness of Rousseau's solemn warnings, a man who was often looked upon as a visionary, because he advocated the useful instruction of the children of the rich.

"You trust," said he, "to the present state of society, without reflecting that this order is subject to inevitable revolutions, and that it is impossible for you to foresee the fate of your children. The great will become insignificant, the rich will become poor, the monarch a subject; the blows of fortune are not so rare, that you may hope to be exempt from them. We are approaching a crisis, and an age of revolutions. Who can answer

for the future? All that men have done may be overturned; nature alone is eternal, and nature never made a prince, a rich man, or a great lord."

When the critical moment arrived, this mournful truth was fully proved. Gentlemen, accustomed from their infancy to a luxurious and elegant life, and to all the pleasures of refined society, were suddenly reduced to the exercise of the most humble professions. Many emigrants taught music and drawing; others gave lessons in the French language, and in literature; whilst the mechanic arts furnished numbers with bread.

M. and Madame Latour du Pin, who had spent their lives at the French court amid a round of gaiety and splendour, removed to America, and took a farm on the banks of the Delaware. M. Latour du Pin performed by turns the duties of a field labourer, wood-cutter, architect, and mason; and his wife, metamorphosed into an intelligent and active housekeeper, baked bread, performed all the household duties, and carried to market various garden vegetables, and poultry raised by her own hands.

M. de Caumont, adjutant-general, and belonging to one of the best French families, went to London and studied bookbinding.

Laying aside his sword and gilded shoulder-belt, he put on a workman's apron; and, animated by a noble ambition, he determined to improve his new art.

M. de Caumont had often admired the rich bindings handed down to us from past centuries; prayer books with their brilliant covers ornamented with topazes and rubies; missals adorned with miniatures of the Byzantine art, sparkling with emeralds, with clasps of ivory, gold, or silver, with an amethyst in the centre set in silver, according to the custom of Saint Eloy, gold and silversmith to King Dagobert.

Caumont's object was not to attain a like richness in the art of bookbinding, but to give it a more than usual elegance. In this he succeeded; his bindings were solid and at the same time light, and possessed a grace and elasticity which rendered them very valuable. In a few years, he became one of the most skil

ful bookbinders of his time; and English ladies of rank crowded to the workshop of the former French nobleman, who had lost none of his dignity in losing his rank.

Let us return to the subject of inventions. The period which occupies us, that is to say, from the beginning of the Revolution to the first year of the imperial government, was very fertile in this respect.

Lithography, that ingenious discovery which has given a rival to engraving, dates from that epoch. At the beginning of this century, says the Encyclopedia, an ingenious man proposed a method of drawing or writing upon stone, so as to obtain several hundred fac similes of the original upon paper. This fortunate discovery, of a nature to create a revolution in the arts, was not well received in the beginning; the composition of the pencil or ink used in it, being kept secret, created a suspicion of quackery. Nevertheless, lithography advanced rapidly, and soon overcame all obstacles.

The glory of this invention is due to a poor chorister in the theatre at Munich, named Aloys Sennefelder. He first observed the property possessed by calcareous stones, of retaining a drawing made with oleaginous ink, and of transmitting it faithfully to paper when strong pressure was applied. He also remarked that the effect could be repeated by moistening the stone, and renewing the ink in every line of the drawing.

In 1788, Sennefelder obtained from the King of Bavaria an exclusive privilege for the exercise of his process for thirteen years, and founded a lithographic establishment at Munich.

Sennefelder made this discovery in Germany, in 1783. A short time after, it was introduced into France and England, by Mr. Andrew Frankfort; but it met with no success in France, whilst in England it was carried on to great advantage.

It was not until towards 1815, that lithography was practised in Paris. Since then, every year has beheld new improvements in that art, so useful to arts and sciences. By its means, copies of writings are produced with an exact imitation of the hand