pted to produce
something resembling historical pictures, by arranging models and
furniture, and photographing the _tableaux vivants_ so obtained, the
effect produced on the spectator was always the simple fact that he was
looking at a photograph of dressed-up models and carefully arranged
furniture. Anything farther from a true picture it would be impossible
to conceive. The _naivete_ of the mistake on which this spurious Art was
founded is really amusing. The photographers fancied that the painters
merely copied their models, and so thought it easy to rival them. Why,
even the very severest and most rigid pre-Raphaelites use the model as
little more than a stimulus, an authority, or a suggestion. Copy the
model, indeed! I should like to know where on earth Hunt could have
found a woman capable of assuming and retaining that marvellous
expression of beatitude that illuminates the sweet face of Mary when she
finds Jesus in the temple. That expression which is the most mighty
thing in the whole picture--the mightiest, I mean, over the hearts of
all men and women who can really feel anything--was gotten out
of the painter's own soul, not from any hired model whatever. And
the other intense expression of maternal love in the 'Rescue,' by
Millais,--whence came it? From the model, think you, or the mind of the
painter?"--_Thoughts_, p. 230.

"And what a lamentable waste of labor it is, when artists forget all
about the mutual relation of things, to copy unmeaning details in long
months of labor, which any good photographer would obtain in infinitely
greater perfection with an exposure of as many minutes! The mere fact
that photography does this sort of work so unapproachably well should be
enough of itself to warn our young painters from engaging it. Anybody
who wants a plain fact about a piece of cliff or castle-wall can get it
in a photograph for a few shillings; then why should he spend pounds for
a picture which will give him nothing more? But the relation of the
castle or cliff to the heaven above or the water beneath, and to the
minds of men,--the significant stains of color upon it, the grandeur of
its enduring strength, the deep human feelings that it ought to kindle
in the spectator's heart,--these things are the exclusive domain of the
painter, and he should never sacrifice the least of these to mere
literal fidelity of detail."--_Thoughts_, p. 232.

To our purely literary readers we may say, that Mr. Hamerton is