knotted with Birmingham pearls nearly as
large as coat buttons; a great deal of gauze,
wonderfully snipped about and overlaid with
divers patterns; with a border of large thick
white lilies round the cape. The lady was
placed on a chair before the camera, though at
some distance from it. The gentleman leaned
over the back of the chair; symbolically to
express the inclination that he had towards his
wife: he was her leaning tower, he was her oak
and she the nymph who sat secure under his
shade. Under the point of the gentleman's
sword the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
was placed to prop it up; and one or two trifling
distortions were made at the extremity of
the proposed picture to neutralise the
contrary distortions that would be produced on
that portion of the image in the camera.
We then peeped under a black pall into the
machine itself, where we beheld the gentleman
and lady on a piece of ground-glass,
standing on their heads. Leaving Doctor
and Mrs. Sword to stand at ease and talk to
one another, we, Messieurs Pen, departed
from the camera for a few minutes and
accompanied the artist to his den behind the
scenes.

The den of the photographer, in which
he goes through those mysterious operations
which are not submitted to the observation
of the sitter, is a small room lighted by a
window, and communicating into a dark
closet, veiled with heavy curtains. Our sense
of the supernatural, always associated with
dark closets, was excited strongly in this
chamber, by the sound of a loud rumbling in
the bowels of the house, and the visible
departure of a portion of the wall to lower
regions. We thought instinctively of bandits
who wind victims up and down in moveable
rooms or turn them up in treacherous screw
bedsteads. But, of course, there was no
danger to be apprehended. What we saw
was, of course, only a contrivance to save
labour in conveying pictures up or down for
colouring or framing. Our consciences having
been satisfied on this point, the expert magician
took a plate of the prescribed size, made
ready to his hand. Such plates consist of
a thin layer of silver fixed upon copper, and
are provided to the artist highly polished;
but a final and superlative polish is given to
each plate, with a "buff" or pad like a double
handled razor strop, tinged with a fine mineral
powder. Simple as it appears, the final
polishing of the plate is an operation that can
only succeed well under a practised pair of
hands, that regulate their pressure by a
refined sense of touch. The plate thus polished
was brushed over finally and very lightly, as
with the touch of a cat's paw, with a warm
pad of black velvet freshly taken from an
oven.

To witness the next process we went into the
dark closet itself, the very head quarters of
spectredom. There, having carefully excluded
daylight, the operator lifted up the lid of a
small bin, rapidly fixed the plate, silver side
downwards, in a place made underneath for
its reception, shut down the lid, and began to
measure seconds by counting, talking between
whiles, thus:—"One—that box—two
contains—three—chloride of iodine—four—
strewn—five—six at the bottom. Now!"
(Presto, out came the plate in a twinkling,
and was held against a sheet of white paper,
upon which it reflected a ghastly straw colour
by the light of a small jet of gas.) "Ah, tint
not deep enough!" The plate was popped
into its vapour bath again with magic quickness.
"Seven—the action of the iodine"
(continued the operator, counting seconds,
and teaching us our lesson in the same breath)
"rising in vapour upon the surface—eleven
—of the plate—twelve—causes it to take
in succession—thirteen—fourteen—fifteen—
all the colours of the spectrum—sixteen—
seventeen; and deposits upon it a film." As
he went on solemnly counting, we asked
how long he exposed the plate to the
visitation of that potent vapour." A very
short time," he replied; "but it varies—
thirty—thirty-one—according to the light
in the next room—thirty-five—thirty-six—
thirty-seven. Adjusting the plate to the
weather, thirty-eight—is the result of an
acquired instinct—thirty-nine—forty. Now it
is ready." The plate was out, and its change
to a deeper straw colour was shown. The lid
of an adjoining bin was lifted, and the iodized
plate was hung in the same way over another
vapour; that of the chloride of bromine, that
the wraiths of the two vapours might mingle,
mingle, mingle as black spirits with white,
blue spirits with gray. In this position it
remained but a very short time, while we
stood watching by in the dark cupboard.
The plate having had its temper worked
upon by these mysterious agencies was
rendered so extremely sensitive, that it was
requisite to confine it at once, in a dark hole
or solitary cell, made ready for it in a wooden
frame; a wooden slide was let down over
it, and it was ready to be carried to the
camera.

Before quitting this part of the subject, we
must add to the preceding description two or
three external facts. We have been
discussing hitherto the kernel without touching
the nutshell in which these, like all other
reasonable matters in this country, may be
(and usually are) said to lie. The nutshell is
in fact as important to a discussion in this
country as the small end of the wedge
or the British Lion:—In the action of light
upon surfaces prepared in a certain manner
lies the whole idea of photography. The
camera-obscura is an old friend; how to fix
chemically the illuminated images formed in
the camera by light, was a problem at which
Sir Humphrey Davy, half a century ago, was
one of the first men who worked. Sir
Humphrey succeeded no farther than in the
imprinting of a faint image, but as he could