Diderot, as has been justly said, himself the son of a cutler, might well bring handiwork into honour; assuredly he had inherited from his good father's workshop sympathy and regard for skill and labour.[167] The illustrative plates to which Diderot gave the most laborious attention for a period of almost thirty years, are not only remarkable for their copiousness, their clearness, their finish--and in all these respects they are truly admirable--but they strike us even more by the semi-poetic feeling that transforms the mere representation of a process into an animated scene of human life, stirring the sympathy and touching the imagination of the onlooker as by something dramatic.

The bustle, the dexterity, the alert force of the iron foundry, the glass furnace, the gunpowder mill, the silk calendry are as skilfully reproduced as the more tranquil toil of the dairywoman, the embroiderer, the confectioner, the setter of types, the compounder of drugs, the chaser of metals.

The drawings recall that eager and personal interest in his work, that nimble complacency, which is so charming a trait in the best French craftsman.

The animation of these great folios of plates is prodigious.

They affect one like looking down on the world of Paris from the heights of Montmartre.