mate, shall be henceforth its own painter, engraver, printer, and publisher. Here is a revolution in art; and, that we may not be behindhand in revolutions, for which we have so imitative a taste, no sooner does one start up in Paris, but we must have one in London too. And so Mr Daguerre's invention is instantly rivalled by Mr Fox Talbot's. The Dagueroscope and the Photogenic revolutions are to keep you all down, ye painters, engravers, and, alas! the harmless race, the sketchers. All ye, by whom the "Flumen Rhenum, aut pluvius discu. bitur arcus," before whose unsteady hands towers have toppled down upon the paper, and the pagodas of the East have bowed, hide your heads in holes and corners, and wait there till you are called for. The "mountain in labour" will no more produce a mouse; it will reproduce itself, with all that is upon it. Ye artists of all denominations that have so vilified nature as her journeymen, see how she rises up against you, and takes the staff into her own hands. Your mistress now, with a vengeance, she will show you what she really is, and that the cloud is not "very like a whale." You must positively abscond. Now, as to you, locality painters, with your towns and castles on the Rhine, you will not get the "ready rhino" for them now and we have no pity for you. Bridges are far too arch now to put up with your false perspective. They will no longer be abridged of their due proportions by you; they will measure themselves and take their own toll. You will no longer be tolerated. You drawers of churches, Britton, Pugin, Mackenzie, beware lest you yourselves be drawn in. Every church will show itself to the world without your help. It will make its wants visible and known on paper; and, though vestry and churchwarden quash the church rates, every steeple will lift up its head and demand proper repair.

"Mox reficit rates Quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati." Ye animal painters, go no more to the Zoologicals to stare the lions out of countenance-they do not want your countenance any more. The day is come for every beast to be his own portrait painter. "None but himself shall be his parallel." Every garden will publish its own Botanical Magazine. The true "Forget me not"

will banish all others from the earth. Talk no more of "holding the mirror up to nature"-she will hold it up to herself, and present you with a copy of her countenance for a penny. What would you say to looking in a mirror and having the image fastened!! As one looks sometimes, it is really quite frightful to think of it; but such a thing is possible-nay, it is probable -no, it is certain. What will become of the poor thieves, when they shall see handed in as evidence against them their own portraits, taken by the room in which they stole, and in the very act of stealing! What wonderful discoveries is this wonderful discovery destined to discover! The telescope is rather an unfair tell-tale; but now every thing and every body may have to encounter his double every where, most inconveniently, and thus every one become his own caricaturist. Any one may walk about with his patent sketch-book-set it to work-and see in a few moments what is doing behind his back! Poor Murphy outdone!— the weather must be its own almanac

the waters keep their own tide-tables. What confusion will there be in autograph signs manual! How difficult to prove the representation a forgery, if nobody has a hand in it!!

Mr Babbage in his (miscalled ninth Bridgewater) Treatise announces the astounding fact, as a very sublime truth, that every word uttered from the creation of the world has registered itself, and is still speaking, and will speak for ever in vibrations. In fact, there is a great album of Babel. But what too, if the great business of the sun be to act registrar likewise, and to give out impressions of our looks, and pictures of our actions; and so, if with Bishop Berkeley's theory, there be no such thing as anything, quoad matter, for aught we know to the contrary, other worlds of the system may be peopled and conducted with the images of persons and transactions thrown off from this and from each other; the whole universal nature being nothing more than phonetic and photogenic structures. As all readers may not have read the accounts of this singular invention, upon which we have made these comments, we subjoin the letter of Mr Talbot to the editor of the Literary Gazette, in which valuable periodical we first saw the announces ment of the discovery in France, to

which we will add, from the same source, the French account of M. Daguerre's invention. The extreme modesty of Mr Fox Talbot's will be very striking. Specimens have been exhibited at the Royal Institution and before the Royal Society.

"To the Editor of the Literary

"DEAR SIR,

Gazette.

"I have great pleasure in complying with the wish you have expressed to me, that I would go into some details respecting the invention which I have communicated to the Royal Society, viz., the art of photo. genic drawing, or of forming pictures and images of natural objects by means of solar light. I do this the more readily, on account of the interest with which the scientific public have read the accounts which have recently appeared respecting the discoveries of M. Daguerre, of Paris, in some respects identical with mine; in others, I think, materially different. Although I am very far indeed from being of the opinion, that

Chance rules supreme in the affairs of men ;'

yet, I cannot help thinking that a very singular chance (or mischance) has happened to myself, viz. that, after having devoted much labour and attention to the perfecting of this invention, and having now brought it, as I think, to a point in which it deserves the notice of the scientific world-that exactly at the moment when I was engaged in drawing up an account of it to be presented to the Royal Society, the same invention should be announced in France. Under these circumstances, by the advice of my scientific friends, I immediately collected together such specimens of my process as I had with me in town, and exhibited them to public view at a meeting of the Royal Institution. My written communication to the Royal Society was, from its length, necessarily deferred to the week following. These steps I took, not with the intention of rivalizing with M. Daguerre in the perfection of his processes (of which I know nothing, but am ready to believe all that Biot and Arago have stated in their praise), but to preclude the possibility of its being said that I had borrowed the idea from him, or was indebted to him,

or any one, for the means of overcoming the principal difficulties. As the process of M. Daguerre is at present a profound secret, even at Paris, it is evident that no one could imitate him here, or exhibit pictures formed in the same way, or depending on the same optical principles, who was not already fully acquainted with a secret, not indeed the same, but similar or tantamount to his. That M. Daguerre's pictures will stand the effect of time, is, I suppose, the fact, though I do not find it expressly mentioned in the report of M. Arago, (Comptes Rendus, 7th January). My own have stood between three and four years; I therefore consider that the principles of the art are firmly laid. Many instru ments have been devised, at various times, for abridging the labour of the artist in copying natural objects, and for insuring greater accuracy in the design than can be readily attained without such assistance. Among these may be more particularly mentioned the camera obscura and the camera lucida, which are familiar to most persons; certainly very ingenious and beautiful instruments, and in many circumstances eminently useful, especially the latter. Yet are there many persons who do not succeed in using them, and, I believe, few are able to do so with great success, except those who, in other respects, are skilled in drawing. Up to a certain point, these inventions are excellent; beyond that point they do not go. They assist the artist in his work, they do not work for him. They do not dispense with his time, nor with his skill, nor with his attention. All they can do is to guide his eye and correct his judgment; but the actual performance of the drawing must be his own. From all these prior ones, the present invention differs totally in this respect (which may be explained in a single sentence), viz. that, by means of this contrivance, it is not the artist who makes the picture, but the picture which makes itself. All that the artist does is to dispose the apparatus before the object whose image he requires; he then leaves it for a certain time, greater or less, according to circumstances. At the end of the time, he returns, takes out his picture, and finds it finished. The agent in this operation is solar light, which being thrown by a lens upon a sheet of prepared

paper, stamps upon it the image of the object, whatever that may chance to be, which is placed before it. The very foundation of the art, therefore, consists in this-eminently curious natural fact, viz. that there exists a substance so sensitive of light, as to be capable of receiving even its faint impressions. The whole possibility of the process depends upon this; for, if no such substance existed in rerum naturâ, the notion of thus copying objects would be nothing more than a scientific dream. Moreover, it is not sufficient that the paper should be so sensitive as to receive the impressions of external objects; it is requisite also, that, having received them, it should retain them; and, moreover, that it should be insensible with regard to other objects to which it may be subsequently exposed. The necessity of this is obvious, for otherwise, new impressions would be received, which would confuse and efface the former ones. But it is easier to perceive the necessity of the thing required than to attain to its realization. And this has hitherto proved a most serious obstacle to those who have experimented with this object in view. This was one of the few scientific enquiries in which Sir Humphry Davy engaged, upon which fortune did not smile. Either his enquiries took a wrong direction, or else, perhaps, the property sought for was of so singular a nature, that there was nothing to guide the search; or, perhaps, he despaired of it too soon. However this may be, the result undoubtedly was, that the attempt proved unsuccessful, and it was abandoned. As Sir Humphry Davy himself informs us," no attempts have as yet been successful." These words are quoted from his own account, in the Journal of the Royal Institution, 1802. The subject then dropped, and appears to have been no more spoken of for upwards of thirty years; when, in 1834, unaware of Davy's researches, I undertook a course of experiments with the same object in view. I know not what good star seconded my efforts. After various trials, I succeeded in hitting upon a method of obtaining this desideratum. By this process it is possible to destroy the sensibility of the paper, and to render it quite insensible. After this change it may be exposed with safety to the light of day; it may even be

placed in the sunshine; indeed I have specimens which have been left an hour in the sun without having received any apparent deterioration. A fact, therefore, is thus established, which is not without its importance in a theoretical point of view, besides its more immediate application to purposes of utility. With this kind of paper, eminently susceptible of being acted upon by light, and yet capable of losing that property when required, a great number of curious performances may readily be accomplished. The most remarkable of these is undoubtedly the copying the portrait of a distant object, as the fuçade of a building, by fixing its image in the camera obscura; but one, perhaps, more calculated for universal use, is the power of depicting exact fac-similes of smaller objects, which are in the vicinity of the operator, such as flowers, leaves, engravings, &c., which may be accomplished with great facility, and often with a degree of rapidity that is almost marvellous. The specimens of this art, which I exhibited at the Royal Institution, though consisting only of what I happened to have with me in town, are yet sufficient to give a general idea of it, and to show the wide range of its applicability. Among them were pictures of flowers and leaves; a pattern of lace; figures taken from painted glass; a view of Venice, copied from an engraving; some images formed by the solar microscope, viz. a slice of wood very highly magnified, exhibiting the pores of two kinds, one set much smaller than the other, and more numerous. Another microscopic sketch, exhibiting the reticulations on the wing of an insect. Finally, various pictures, representing the architecture of my house in the country; all these made with the camera obscura, in the summer of 1835. And this I believe to be the first instance on record of a house having painted its own portrait. A person unacquainted with the process, if told that nothing of all this was executed by the hand, must imagine that one has at one's call the genius of Aladdin's lamp. And, indeed, it may almost be said that this is something of the same kind. It is a little bit of magic realized-of natural magic. You make the powers of nature work for you, and no wonder that your work is well and quickly done. No matter whether the subject be large

or small, simple or complicated; whether the flower branch which you wish to copy contains one blossom or one thousand; you set the instrument in action, the allotted time elapses, and you find the picture finished, in every part and in every minute particular. There is something in this rapidity and perfection of execution which is very wonderful. But, after all, what is Nature but one great field of wonders past our comprehension? Those, indeed, which are of every-day occurrence do not habitually strike us, on account of their familiarity; but they are not the less, on that account, essential portions of the same wonderful whole. I hope it will be borne in mind by those who take an interest in this subject, that, in what I have hitherto done, I do not profess to have perfected an art, but to have commenced one, the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain. I only claim to have based this new art upon a secure foundation: it will be for more skilful hands than mine to rear the superstructure.-I remain, dear sir, yours," &c.

"H. Fox TALBOT."

Now for some account of the French discovery.

"French Discovery-Pencil of Nature. Who has not admired the splendid and wonderful representations in the camera obscura? images so clear, so full of life, so perfectly representing every object in nature. These living pictures, by traversing lens and mirrors, are thrown down with double beauty on the table of the camera obscura by the radiant finger of light. The new art has been discovered to fix these wonderful images, which have hitherto passed away volatile— evanescent as a dream-to stop them, at our will, on a substance finely sensible to the immediate action of light, and render them permanent before our eyes, in traces represented by tints in perfect harmony on each point with different degrees of intensity. We must not, however, believe, as has been erroneously reported to the public with respect to these [Parisian] experiments, that the proper colours of objects are represented in these images by colours: they are only represented, with extreme truth, by light, and in every gradation of shade; as an oil painting is given by a perfect

engraving, consisting of black lines; or, perhaps, more akin to a design made with mathematical accuracy, and in aqua-tinta; for there are no crossings of lines in the designs by the pencil of nature: red, blue, yellow, green, &c., are rendered by combinations of light and shade-by demitints, more or less clear or obscure, according to the quantity of light in each colour. But, in these copies, the delicacy of the design-the purity of the forms the truth and harmony of tone-the aerial perspective-the high finish of the details, are all expressed with the highest perfection.

The formidable lens, which often betrays monstrosities in the most delicate and aerial of our masterpieces, may here search for defects in vain. The creations of nature triumph. Far from betraying any defect, the highest magnifier only tends to show more clearly its vast superiority. At each step we find new objects to admire, revealing to us the existence of exquisite details, which escape the naked eye, even in reality. Nor can this astonish us when the radiant light, which can only act according to the immutable laws of nature, substitutes its rays for the hesitating pencil of the artist. M. Daguerre has represented, from the Pont des Arts, and in a very small space, the whole bank of the Seine, including that part of the Louvre containing the grand gallery of pictures. Each line, each point, is rendered with a perfection quite unattainable by all means hitherto used; he has also reproduced the darkness of Notre Dame, with its immense draperies and Gothic sculpture. He has also taken the view of a building in the morning at eight o'clock, at midday, and at four o'clock in the afternoon, during rain and in sunshine. Eight or ten minutes at most, in the climate of Paris, is sufficient; but under a more ardent sun, such as that of Egypt, one minute will suffice. To artists and savans, who travel, and who often find it impossible to prolong their stay at interesting places, this process must be most welcome. The French journals, and reports of proceedings, however, admit that these admirable representations still leave something to be desired as to effect, when regarded as works of art. It is singular, they observe, that the power which created them scems to have

abandoned them, and that these works of light want light. Even in those parts the most lighted, there is an absence of vivacity and effect; and it is to be allowed that, amidst all the harmony of their forms, these views appear subjected to the sober and heavy tone of colour imparted by a dull northern sky. It would appear that, by passing through the glasses of the optical arrangements of M. Daguerre, all the views are uniformly clothed with a melancholy aspect, like that given to the horizon by the approach of evening. Motion, it is obvious, can never be copied; and the attempt to represent animals and shoeblacks in action, consequently failed. Statuary is said to have been well defined, but, hitherto, M. Daguerre has not succeeded in copying the living physiognomy in a satisfactory manner, though he does not despair of success. It could not have escaped chemists that various chemical products are sensibly affected by light. Some gases may remain together in the dark without any effect, but a ray of light will cause instant explosion. Other bodies, such as the chloruret of silver, are modified in colour. It at first takes a violet tint, afterwards becomes black. This property would doubtless have suggested the idea of applying it to the art of design. But, by this method, the most brilliant parts of the object become discoloured, and the darker parts remain white. This produces an effect contrary to fact; and, again, the continued action of light tends to render the whole dark. Mr Talbot's method would seem to be based on the use of the salts of silver, with the addition of some substance or covering to prevent the further action of light after the design was complete. This discovery will doubtless make a great revolution in the arts of design, and, in a multitude of cases, will supersede old methods altogether inferior. The temporary interest of many may at first be affected; but whatever has the true character of good, cannot essentially do mischief. The invention of printing soon gave employment to many more than were employed as copyists. Even in our own time, the substitution of steel plates for engraving, instead of copper, although fifty times as many copies may be taken from them, has, by the substitution of good engravings for indifferent ones, so extended the

demand, that more steel plates are now required than were formerly used of copper.

moon.

We must add a few words with reference to science. This newly discovered substance, so easily acted upon by the rays of light, opens a wide field for photometric experiments which hitherto have been hopeless, more particularly on the light of the M. Arago recalls to our attention some experiments made by himself, jointly with other philosophers, by which the light of the moon (300,000 times less than that of the sun) concentrated by the most powerful glasses, gave no indication of chemical action on the chloruret of silver, nor any sign of heat on the most delicate thermometer. We should be glad to know if any experiments have yet been made with the concentrated light of the moon on thermo-electrical apparatus, which may be constructed of extreme delicacy. The substance used by M. Daguerre is evidently sensible to the action of lunar light, since, in twenty minutes, he can represent, under the form of a white spot, the exact image of this luminary.

M. Biot, who, from the nature of his labours in the fields of science, takes a lively interest in the discovery in question, anticipates much from the means afforded by it to carry out the analysis of some of the most delicate phenomena of nature. M. Daguerre has, it is asserted, already discovered some new properties of light, and is still carrying on the investigation."

Here, in truth, is a discovery launched upon the world, that must make a revolution in art. It is impossible, at first view, not to be amused at the sundry whimsical views the coming changes present. But, to speak more seriously, in what way, in what degree, will art be affected by it? Art is of two kinds, or more properly speaking, has two walks, the imaginative and the imitative; the latter may, indeed, greatly assist the former, but, in the strictly imitative, imagination may not enter but to do mischief. They may be considered therefore, as the two only proper walks. It must be evident that the higher, the imaginative, cannot immediately be affected by the new discovery-it is not tangible to its power-the poetry of the mind cannot be submitted to this material pro