I will give the concluding paragraph of a
private letter from the Professor to me; He says.

"If mine were the first, other experimenters soon made better results,
and if there are any who dispute that I was first, I shall have no
argument with them; for I was not so anxious to be the first to produce
the result, as to produce it in any way. I esteem it but the natural
carrying out of the wonderful discovery, and that the credit was after
all due to Daguerre. I lay no claim to any improvements."

Since I commenced the compilation of this work, I have had the pleasure
of making the acquaintance of an American gentleman--James M. Wattles
Esq.--who as early as 1828--and it will be seen, by what I have already
stated, that this is about the same date of M. Niepce's discovery--had
his attention attracted to the subject of Photography, or as he termed
it "Solar picture drawing," while taking landscape views by means of
the camera-obscura. When we reflect upon all the circumstances
connected with his experiments, the great disadvantages under which he
labored, and his extreme youthfullness, we cannot but feel a national
pride--yet wonder--that a mere yankee boy, surrounded by the deepest
forests, hundred of miles from the populous portion of our country,
without the necessary materials, or resources for procuring them,
should by the force of his natural genius make a discovery, and put it
in practical use, to accomplish which, the most learned philosophers of
Europe, with every requisite apparatus, and a profound knowledge of
chemistry--spent years of toil to accomplish. How much more latent
talent may now be slumbering from the very same cause which kept Mr.
Wattles from publicly revealing his discoveries, viz; want of
encouragement--ridicule!

At the time when the idea of taking pictures permanently on paper by
means of the camera-obscura first occurred to him, he was but sixteen
years of age, and under the instructions of Mr. Charles Le Seuer, (a
talented artist from Paris) at the New Harmony school, Indiana.
Drawing and painting being the natural bent of his mind, he was
frequently employed by the professors to make landscape sketches in the
manner mentioned. The beauty of the image of these landscapes produced
on the paper in the camera-obscura, caused him to pause and admire them
with all the ardor of a young artist, and wish that by some means, he
could fix them there in all their beauty. From wishing he brough