he easiest ways of accomplishing this double purpose is to cut a
convex lens through the middle, grind the curves of the two halves
down to straight lines, and join them by their thin edges. This is a
_squinting magnifier_, and if arranged so that with its right half we
see the right picture on the slide, and with its left half the left
picture, it squints them both inward so that they run together and form
a single picture.

Such are the stereoscope and the photograph, by the aid of which _form_
is henceforth to make itself seen through the world of intelligence, as
thought has long made itself heard by means of the art of printing. The
_morphotype_, or form-print, must hereafter take its place by the side
of the _logotype_, or word-print. The _stereograph_, as we have called
the double picture designed for the stereoscope, is to be the card of
introduction to make all mankind acquaintances.

The first effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope
is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way
into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in
the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. The
elbow of a figure stands forth so as to make us almost uncomfortable.
Then there is such a frightful amount of detail, that we have the same
sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. A painter shows us
masses; the stereoscopic figure spares us nothing,--all must be there,
every stick, straw, scratch, as faithfully as the dome of St. Peter's,
or the summit of Mont Blanc, or the ever-moving stillness of Niagara.
The sun is no respecter of persons or of things.

This is one infinite charm of the photographic delineation.
Theoretically, a perfect photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a
picture you can find nothing which the artist has not seen before you;
but in a perfect photograph there will be as many beauties lurking,
unobserved, as there are flowers that blush unseen in forests and
meadows. It is a mistake to suppose one knows a stereoscopic picture
when he has studied it a hundred times by the aid of the best of our
common instruments. Do we know all that there is in a landscape
by looking out at it from our parlor-windows? In one of the glass
stereoscopic views of Table Rock, two figures, so minute as to be
mere objects of comparison with the surrounding vastness, may be seen
standing side by side. Look at the two faces with a s