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Prints are familiar to every one of us, and yet the subject of prints is strangely unfamiliar. If we look at a painting, a piece of sculpture, or at a monumental building, we know how these things came into being. Without any effort we can see in our mind’s eye the painter, with palette and brushes, applying the colors on his canvas, we can see the sculptor thumbing the clay model on the stand before him, with alternate gentleness and force, while the spectacle of stone-masons and bricklayers at work is a matter of daily occurrence. Likewise are we daily face to face with prints in our homes. They are familiar objects that have always been there; we are so used to them that we hardly see them. But have we ever conjured up, in our mind’s eye, the vision of an engraver, or etcher, or lithographer at work making the print which is so familiar to us? It is a world, indeed, this field on which the energies of thousands upon thousands of men have been expended, expressive of the thoughts of great masters, expressive, yes, eloquent, of the changing mental attitude, the changing customs and interests of successive periods. There is no field, I am tempted to say, in all the realm of art, more comprehensive, more broadening than this subject of prints. In order fully to appreciate the phases of its development, we must find out, first of all, what a print is, and how it is made.