Page:The Polygraphic Apparatus.djvu/17

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l2 furnishes the most correct copy of man and all that surrounds him, whether it be living or lifeless. Let us pass through the temple of Nature, Art or Science, —— there is nothing that is not otfered to man with striking resemblance. From the smallest grain of sand up to the largest monument, from the almost imperceptible animal up to the gigantic animal, its designing eye reaches. The wonderful apparatus need only be fixed on a high mountain, and the moment its glass is opened, all living and lifeless objects, as far as the human eye reaches within the horizon, appear copied on the plain -—- whilst the objects copied have not the least notion that they were all the time in the power of some one else who copied them to his fancy. Let then the apparatus be fixed in the plain, so as to command the heights whence it before commanded the plain, and all the · surrounding heights will by this means become the property of ‘ the camera, of which otherwise the very outlines would have been inaccessible. If we are anxious to preserve the memory of any particular monument, we need only fix the apparatus near the same, and within a few minutes it will furnish what connoisseurs would not have been able to furnish in an equal number of days _ —— and in so correct a copy-- whilst language, if ever so flowery, would not have given us so correct a notion of the object required. Before we have time to compose an explanatory catalogue, the i photographic apparatus has already furnished a copy of the object l in such a manner, that the admiring connoisseur cannot leave F off looking at it with the magnifying glass. But now we will pass over to a more extensive depart- ment which is interesting to everybody: Let, by degrees, the i whole world be furnished in pictures —-- this would give employ- I ment to thousands of photographers, and will give millions of { purchasers an opportunity to collect it, as far as required , within ' a small space of their rooms. And first and foremost, let us com- mence at home: surely our paternal country is so rich in treasures of art, that one grows almost afraid of its superabundance. But ;