No doubt it is its facilities for the reproduction of originals with accuracy and minute detail that render photography invaluable as the handmaid of science and nearly all the arts. And on this side it becomes itself a science of the first order, levying contributions on the higher departments of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Just as the con structor may be an architect or an engineer, so the art photographer and the photo-mechanic stand side by side. We are apt to depreciate the photo-mechanical worker because his productions are destined to be multiplied and sold at the cheapest prices ; they are the copies of another's original. Even the oil painter or the artist in black and white hardly realises the science as well as the skill involved in the processes, reproducing with such fidelity brush marks and pencil lines which were aforetime travestied by wood engravers and lithographers. The power to enlarge or reduce a subject in more exact proportion than the human artificer can possibly attempt ; to rule, for instance, the lines of a glass screen to the fineness of upwards of T of an inch, whereas mechanical instruments have failed to reach : these are triumphs only to be understood at their true value in the workshop or the laboratory.
In the more popular applications of photography the evil and the good are intermingled. The vulgar and tasteless picture-postcard is multiplied as well as the masterpieces of Raphael and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Each man's taste is ministered to impartially. The million find an efficient substitute for what was once the luxury of the rich and cultured. No age can boast the possession of more portrait painters than can be counted on the fingers, and their works fetch a high price ; the poorest can procure a photo graph recalling in some way the features of the loved ones who have gone to distant lands, or into the unknown ; the lineaments of the criminal flying from justice are scattered abroad so that he can find no corner to escape recognition.
The hand-camera fiend invades our privacy everywhere ; nothing is sacred in his eyes. But the same much-abused instrument gives the city toiler a delightful occupation for his winter evenings, when he finishes off and arranges his little collection. Artless and uninteresting most of them may seem to the superior critic ; but they are to their owner a priceless record of his travels, replete with pleasant memories of rambles on the breezy moors, or by the sunny sea-shore. And they may prove the prelude to better things. Perchance he will specialise in the study of some branch of art or natural history as he acquires the habits of observation which photography inevitably stimulates in every man of good will. Not long ago we listened with the greatest interest to a lecture on the habits of the spider given in a rural camera club by a jobbing gardener. While photo graphing autumn flowers for mere amusement he had suddenly discovered the optical illusion which renders at least half a spider's web always invisible to the argus-eyed fly. This set him thinking, with results by which his audience profited exceedingly.
In short, the province of photography is too compre hensive for definition. It is all things to all men. According to the individual it may acquire the spaciousness of true art, will submit to the faithful service of accurate record, or, yet again, hazard its reputation on the chance pressure of a button. Better still, we may describe it as a bond of fellowship, restoring those truer conditions which prevailed among the mediaeval craftsmen, when the fine arts were not separated from the higher mechanical arts, nor were those who practised them. And so we must leave it, hoping that our readers' ambition is to attach themselves to one or other of the two earlier classes, which, each in their own way, promote their own edification and the advantage of their fellow men.