180 CHEMICAL AGENCY 



preserve the lineaments of those who have benefitted 

 their race by their intellect, or their heroism. We can 

 hand down to future ages portraits of our own Welling- 

 ton, and the illustrious Arago, unerring in their truth- 

 fulness. How great would be the joy of all, could we 

 now obtain a daguerreotype portrait of a Greek poet, 

 or of a Boman philosopher, of a Sophocles, or of a 

 Seneca ! How much discussion would be prevented did 

 we possess a calotype portrait of the Bard of Avon, or of 

 the Philosopher of Grantham ! 



By the agency of those very rays which give lift and 

 brilliancy to the laughing eye and the roseate cheek, 

 we can at once correctly trace the outline of the 

 features we admire, with all those shadowy details which 

 give a reality to the "presentment.^ The objects of 

 our love may be for ever present with us in these self- 

 painted pictures. The vicious, whom we would avoid, 

 may be made known to us by this unerring painter. The 

 process which nature employs is perfect ; the imperfec- 

 tions are those of man, and these being few, he may soon 

 learn to remedy. 



To the traveller, how valuable are the processes 

 of photography ! He secures representations of those 

 remains of temples which were in their glory when 

 Moses wrote. He copies by one operation a tomb at 

 Karnac, covered with myriads of hieroglyphics, or an 

 inscribed stone in Arabia, which it would occupy him 

 days to trace. These he can carry to his home and 

 read at his leisure. The relies of hoar antiquity speak- 

 ing to the present of the past, and recording the 

 histories of races which have fleeted away like -shadows, 

 are thus preserved to tell their wondrous tales. 



The admirer of nature may copy her arrangements 

 with the utmost fidelity. Every modulation of the 

 landscape, each projecting rock or beetling tor the 

 sinuous river in its rapid flow the meandering stream, 

 " gliding like happiness away;" and the spreading 



