our stranger eyes, yet the name, subject, artist, owner, all lost in
oblivion! To pause before an interesting but "unknown portrait" is to
read an elegy as pathetic as Gray's.

The mechanical processes by which Nature is so closely imitated, and
the increase of which during the last few years is one of the most
remarkable facts in science, may at the first glance appear to have
lessened the marvellous in Art, by making available to all the exact
representation of still-life. But, when duly considered, the effect is
precisely the reverse; for exactly in proportion as we become familiar
with the mechanical production of the similitudes of natural and
artificial objects, do we instinctively demand higher powers of
conception, greater spiritual expression in the artist. The discovery
of Daguerre and its numerous improvements, and the unrivalled precision
attained by Photography, render exact imitation no longer a miracle of
crayon or palette; these must now create as well as reflect, invent and
harmonize as well as copy, bring out the soul of the individual and of
the landscape, or their achievements will be neglected in favor of
the fac-similes obtainable through sunshine and chemistry. The best
photographs of architecture, statuary, ruins, and, in some cases, of
celebrated pictures, are satisfactory to a degree which has banished
mediocre sketches, and even minutely finished but literal pictures.
Specimens of what is called "Nature-printing," which gives an impression
directly from the veined stone, the branching fern, or the sea-moss,
are so true to the details as to answer a scientific purpose; natural
objects are thus lithographed without the intervention of pencil or ink.
And these several discoveries have placed the results of mere imitative
art within reach of the mass; in other words, her prose language, that
which mechanical science can utter, is so universal, that her poetry,
that which must be conceived and expressed through individual genius,