THE MAGIC MIRROR.
Ie many men still living had been told in youth, or even middle life, that a scene at the antipodes, a departed friend, or an object invisible to the naked eye, could be mirrored before him in living reality, he would have scouted the idea as a dream unworthy even of a poet's attention. It is some twenty years since we saw the first mirrored picture fixed into its frame,—since we had before ns a reflex of natural objects in a photographic form ; and even then how faint the suggestion of what within that short twenty years photography has realized. It has already performed the impossi- bility with which we started, and has begun to promise more,— the reproduction of its pictures in indelible prints, the reproduo-
tion even of the colours of nature. The history of photography indeed is calculated to enforce some of the most valuable truths that we have yet ascertained, and it will perhaps disclose yet others. All great discoveries in science have been made by purely unselfish inquiry. It was the simple scientific love of Franklin which played with the power that has enabled us to converse in- stantaneously with America ; Newton inquired into light, Davy and others amused themselves with experiments' Niepce, Da- guerre, Fox Talbot, and others, gradually conceived more distinct ideas ; but even they awaited the discoveries of the present day for the machinery, the suitable medium, and the permanent ink. Collodion is a discovery of yesterday; printing from the photo- graph is even now undergoing most important developments at the hand of Mr. Paul Pretsch ; and Mr. John Pouncy of Dorches- ter is with great probability of success seeking the prize offered by the Due de Luynes for the best specimen of photographic printing in carbon. Mr. Pretsch's plan is exceedingly simple ; it has been described by an able writer in the last number of the North British Review.
"A photograph or engraving is placed on the prepared plate, and a nega- tive taken in sun-light. The glass is then placed in water with a little alcohol, and the darkened parts are rendered soluble, while the other parts are insoluble, so that in a few minutes we have a picture represented not only by light and shadow, but by the unequal thickness of the gelatine on the glass. When the plate is dry, soft gutta-percha is pressed upon the picture till it hardens. The gutta-percha has consequently an image the reverse of the first. After rubbing it over with bronze powder or black lead, it is placed in a solution of sulphate of copper' and an electrotype plate taken from it, in the usual way, with a voltaic battery. From this plate others can be readily taken, and, as in ordinary copperplate printing, thousands of copies can be thrown off. By this process,' says Mr. Hunt, 'pictures, in which the most delicate detai.ls are very faithfully preserved, and the nice gradations in light and shadow maintained in all their beauty, are now printed from the electrotype plate, obtained from the photograph. The process of photo,galranography is evidently destined to take a very high position as a means of preserving the beauties of nature and art.'"
The uses to which photography can be put are only beginning to develop themselves before the process itself has approached near perfection ; if indeed the practice -will not, as in most human eases, continue to be in the rear of that which science ascertains to be theoretically possible. It seems to be the lowest use of art, when it is turned to an instrument of the criminal police ; and yet justice, the guardian of life and property, cannot despise any instrument which enables it to detect the enemy. A child is murdered, a portrait of it is taken by photography—it is now an easy matter to multiply the photograms—likenesses of the child are distributed ; and thus the very countenance of the murdered infant is exhibited in stations and workhouses, the child is re- cognised, the mother is traced.
We have said that the photograph renders visible that which is invisible to the unassisted human eye,—it fixes the fleeting, and re-
tains the image of the microscope. Mr. Skaife of Vanbrugh House, Blackheath, has been enabled to take the portrait of a 13-inch shell, within a few feet after it left the mortar ; and in doing so, he has discovered some rather curious persistant phenomena in
the development of the smoke' too transitory for the eye to ascer- tain it when it happens but here presented in an enduring pic-
ture.* Mr. 011ey has diced the pictures of the microscope, and we have in a print, reflected from the object itself, the anatomy of the insect world—the extremity of the fly's foot magnified to a size of about two inches in length, exhibiting the hairs, the claws, and the minute feathery process elaborated to secure the firm nuteness that would defy the most consummate maker of angling footing of the insect ; the tongue of the fly, about the size of a large human thumb, an elaborate machinery which it is impossi- ble to describe ; the wing of the bee, with the hooks that fix it to another wing,—each finished off better than the best of fly-fishing hooks ; the scales on the wings of a butterfly developed to the size of rose petals, and here painted by themselves with their minute markings ; the antenna of the cockchafer, a delicate fan- shaped process, not unlike a human glove of many fingers. Thus we have anatomical pictures, showing the details of objects which are themselves scarcely visible to the naked eye, with the details of the details.
Messrs. Marion are now carrying on a business in the produc- tion of photographic visiting cards. The visitor who calls in your absence leaves not only his name, but his portrait,—which is sometimes a card of recommendation as well as an address. These portraits are brought within the compass of a circle that might go upon a finger ring, but telling under the microscope like a vigorous portrait by Titian. We have seen a picture of the Leviathan alias Great Eastern executed on a speck which was in itself almost invisible, the picture itself being discoverable only by the microscope ; but in the case of these cards, the pic- ture, from the powerful machinery of a Herbert Watkins, is a great work of art ; and the visitor munificently distributes por- traits of himself by a great master. We have before us a like- ness of John Millais, which he himself could not excel in execu- tion. How splendid a thing would it have been if Shakspere could have left these records among his friends. Heretofore, we still lacked the accessory of colour ; but M. Niere de St. Victor has succeeded in reproducing the colour of the original on metallic plates ; though he has not yet succeeded in fixing these helioclaromes, for they vanish like the breath from the mirror.
Another experiment by the same scientific inquirer seems likely to cast back from practical art a new view of scientific theory. lie has found that when an object has been exposed for some time
'7u, May 29; Than, July 14; nnea, August 5. to the sun's rays,—say an engraving so exposed for a quarter of an hour,—and then laid by in the dark for several stays, and afterwards applied to a sheet of sensitive paper, a negative picture of the engraving will be produced. This is only the case when the object has been applied to the direct rays of the sun. A piece of white paper placed for three hours under a brilliantly nated image in a camera, afterwards taken out, and applied to a sheet of sensitive paper, in twenty-four hours very visibly reproduced the original image in the camera obscure. Thfs "storing up of light" gives pause to those who look upon light as the effect only of motion. "How," asks the writer in the North British Review, "does light begin to vibrate and perform its functions after it has thus been warehoused?" Perhaps it is not more difficult to suppose such a restoration than the original action ; but if so, should we not extend our conception of " ity ?" May we not be compelled to doubt where "the line can be drawn, between the organic and the inorganic ?—a doubt already forced upon us from other quarters of the natural world. Does not the fact also suggest material for reconsidering the causes why an object remains impressed upon the retina "—if it is " pressed upon the retina,"—some time after the object itself has disappeared ? It is interesting to see practical science thus play.. ing the handmaid of philosophical inquiry ; without which indeed practice is a dull journeyman of little value for mankind, while with that high sanction, practice is the very blacksmith of poetry and philosophy.
We have said that the vision can be reproduced in its living reality upon a plain surface, without any cumbrous machinery be. tween you and the picture as in the case of the stereoscope. It is M. Claudet who has realized this magic feat, and it proves to be as simple in explanation as most important discoveries are. If you will take a piece of ground glass sufficiently transparent for an object to be seen through it, you will find that the transmitted image appears to be visible on the surface of the glass next your eyes ; but there is an important difference between this picture and a direct sight of the object. If you look at it with both eyes, it is like the real thing itself in full relief ; if you look at it only with one eye it becomes a flat object,—a diagram on the surface of the glass without relief. If you look at it with the left eye only, you see such a view of the object as you would see with that eye; with the right, the other side of the object. The peculiarity is explained thus. The granules on the surface of the ground glass form so many prisms, each of which transmits its atom of the pic- ture, but through a double surface, one view of the object towards the eye which is on one side and the other view towards the other eye. For each atom of the object, therefore, you view it with each eye from one aide; yet when the refracted image on the surface of the ground glass is viewed with both eyes you discern but a single object : the brain, or whatever else within us which performs the function, has united the two, just as it unites the two views which your eyes take of the friend before you into the one identical man that he is. M. Claudet at once perceived that this peculiar property of ground glass could be used for a veryre- markable purpose. He prepares the two views of the original object which would be seen by the two eyes respectively ; he arranges them, at a slight angle with each other, behind a plate of ground glass, so that on the surface of the glass the two views coincide. The spectator, looking at the glass from the other side, then sees re- fracted through its granules, with his left eye, the side of the ob- ject that would be seen by his left eye, with his right eye the other side ; with both eyes, the object in full relief as it is in na- ture. The two pictures can be illuminated with some force, the whole chamber, except what we may call the window of ground glass being darkened ; and thus, in a darkened room, you see pro- duced a picture of light on which is limned the portrait of the ab- sent friend, or the scene at the antipodes, with the very depth and substance of relief. The cumbrous nature of the adjuncts has not hitherto rendered this discovery practically available, except as a matter of scientific study ; but M. Claudet explains it with a can- dour and zeal that characterize the scientific inquirer, and it is open to any one to pursue the experiments that he has so splen- didly illustrated.
These are but scraps from the history of the contemporary de- velopment of photography—that art in which the sun is the part- ner of the painter ; and which has placed the miniature, perfect in its finish, within humblest homes of the whole land,—the minia- ture-painter in the " lowest " streets of cities ; the ready, able, tra- velling photographer on the village green. And with the picture are introduced thoughts that connect the dearest affections of the home with those vast powers that transcend the very fancy of the untutored, while they are tasking the study of the wisest, not to compass them but to trace their laws only a little way.
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