116

LITHOGRAPHY.

trade; and the uncertainty of adequate remuneration fromthe public, for whose benefit they make such large sacrificesof time, ease, property, and often health. These reflec-tions induced his ardent and ingenious mind to endeavour toavoid the uncertainty of this contingency:—he did not pos-sess property to enable him to establish himself as a printer;he was consequently compelled to have recourse to theingenious resources of his own mind:—he tried various, and,at first, several unsuccessful experiments, which he ingeni-ously details; because nearly as much is learnt from thefailures of an artist, had he always the honesty to proclaimthem, as is gained from his most successful discoveries.

Various were the materials upon which he first essayed tocomplete his purposes; till, at length, chance directed him totry what could be effected upon stone; for this purpose, heused a species raised in Germany , of a beautifully closegrained and dense kind, susceptible of receiving a finepolish, called Kellheim stone: knowing the failures whichhis countrymen had experienced in endeavouring to fix theink in this stone for etching, he had recourse to a chymicalexpedient to obviate this, which succeeded in the followingmanner. To four or five parts of water, lie added one ofrectified oil of vitriol, which instantly produced an efferves-cence, on being poured upon it; the stone was presentlycovered with a coat of gypsum, which to vitriol is impene-trable; this is easily wiped off, and the stone being dried, it is fitfor use. The next expedient which he found necessary toresort to, was the discovery of a species of ink, proper toanswer the peculiar purposes of the material whereon hehad to operate. For which he discovered none so welladapted as the following mixture : “ A composition of three“ parts of wax with one of common soap, is melted over a“ fire, and mixed with a small portion of lamp-black dis-“ solved in rain water.”

We beg to observe,, that we have understood Bath andPortland stone is sometimes properly prepared; but the beststone yet found in Britain , for that purpose, is what is knownby the name of lias, raised near Stratford-on-Avon, in War­ wickshire ; it is a calcareous, and partly siliceous stone, andwe think not destitute of magnesia, having, when polished,a very silky and somewhat saponaceous feel.

That common sense of justice, which is due from everyman to his fellow man, withholds us from giving farther de-tails of M. Senelfelder’s ingenious publication. If not sominutely abstracted as might have been, we think we cananswer for the correctness of what is given.