TWO WO^^'DERFUL INSTRUMENTS. 



55 



sand uplifted faces as perfectly aa the human eye perceives the feat- 

 ures of a single countenance. Every expression of joy or sorrow, 

 every peculiarity of dress or attitude, the leaves of a forest or the 

 grass by the wayside, Avill have been seen and delineated and retained 

 perfectly in far less than the briefest possible twinkling of a human eye. 



Before me as I write is an instantaneous photograph upon glass of 

 one of the principal boulevards of Paris, taken about noon-time. I 

 seem to be looking down a broad avenue of lofty houses, each six 

 stories high. I can see seven street crossings or blocks. The avenue 

 is lined with shade-trees on either side. The street is filled with a 

 moving panorama. So exquisitely fine are all the details that, to bring 

 them out, I must use a small hand-microscope. Kearly fifty vehicles 

 of every kind are in sight, all in position of arrested motion. A block 

 distant an omnibus is approaching ; the very foot-board slats upon 

 which a passenger rests his feet I can count with my microscope. The 

 sidewalks are crowded with every variety of Parisian costumes. Kear 

 me is a soldier touching his hat to his superior officer as he passes him, 

 and three blocks away I can see a man sweeping the street. School- 

 boys and clerks, shop-girls and mechanics, soldiers and street-sweepers, 

 gentlemen of leisure and rambling travelers, representing every type 

 of Parisian life, are all here. It is a picture of a Moment of Exist- 

 ence. Ten minutes later, and it may be not a single person here rep- 

 resented will be walking or riding along this street, yet the scene it- 

 self will be unchanged. The crowd continues ; the atoms change. 



Here is another Paris view, of a spot infinitely interesting to the 

 historian, the Place de la Concorde. Almost in exact range we see 

 the two fountains on either side of the Obelisk of Luxor ; a quarter 

 of a mile beyond is the Church of the Madeleine. The same ever- 

 moving crowd of human activities is here again unconsciously arrested 

 on this plate of glass ! There rises the Egyptian Obelisk, every hiero- 

 glyph as clear as when first raised in Egypt two thousand years ago. 

 Ah ! if human invention could have caused this eye to preserve for 

 us but one glance of the awful tragedies which have been enacted on 

 this spot ! In place of those romping school-boys or laughing sight- 

 seers, once gathered on this place an eager, hungry, and bloodthirsty 

 crowd of men and women ; where that obelisk points to heaven once 

 stood a platform, and thereon the guillotine. And one day this arrest- 

 ing eye might have seen Louis XVI, bending his head to the axe ; 

 and another day caught Marie Antoinette's look, as she glanced back- 

 ward toward the Tuileries ; or Madame Roland apostrophizing the 

 Statue of Liberty ; or Charlotte Corday murmuring, "The crime, and 

 not the scaffold, makes the shame ! " And imagine the upturned faces 

 of tJiat crowd ! 



But not only is the range of vision vastly inore comprehensive by 

 the photographic camera ; it is far keener. The sensitive plate of the 

 photographer is to-day of special use in the observatory of the astrono- 



