his contention were true, painting would have said its last
word, and sculpture would no doubt soon be superseded by some mechanical contrivance which would be to clay and marble what the camera is to plane surfaces.
Still, Mr. Emerson is a good photographer, and endowed with genuine artistic feeling ; and it would be unjust to dismiss his work without a word of praise for what he has actually accom- plished. Many of his illustrations, if they are not entirely artistic in any accurate sense of the word, show an artistic im- pulse in their creator, and how far it has been possible to over- come the mechanical difficulties of his method. "Sunrise at Sea," "In the Barley Sele," "The Faggot-Cutters," "At Plough," "The Winter's Morning," and " The Mangold Harvest," are all well-chosen and cleverly arranged compositions, and they show us that it is by no means so impossible to combine in photography the human figure and natural landscape, to tell a simple pictorial story, as is commonly believed. We congratulate Mr. Emerson on this achievement ; his work, at all events, deserves that praise which is due to those who try to raise the art to which they are devoted, and to carry it a step further than is usually considered necessary. It is something to have carried photography a step further in the direction of art; and Mr. Emerson is fairly entitled to claim this praise. That he is inclined to over-estimate the capacities of his method is natural enough,—and in our opinion, at least, it is a fault on the right side.
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