a fence, (in Ireland,)--it
may be a tree, (if the Irish license is still allowed us,)--but
clothes-drying, or a place to dry clothes on, the stereoscopic
photograph insists on finding, wherever it gives us a group of houses.
This is the city of Berne. How it brings the people who sleep under that
roof before us to see their sheets drying on that fence! and how real it
makes the men in that house to look at their shirts hanging, arms down,
from yonder line!

The reader will, perhaps, thank us for a few hints as to the choice
of stereoscopes and stereoscopic pictures. The only way to be sure of
getting a good instrument is to try a number of them, but it may be well
to know which are worth trying. Those made with achromatic glasses may
be as much better as they are dearer, but we have not been able to
satisfy ourselves of the fact. We do not commonly find any trouble from
chromatic aberration (or false color in the image). It is an excellent
thing to have the glasses adjust by pulling out and pushing in, either
by the hand, or, more conveniently, by a screw. The large instruments,
holding twenty-five slides, are best adapted to the use of those who
wish to show their views often to friends; the owner is a little apt
to get tired of the unvarying round in which they present themselves.
Perhaps we relish them more for having a little trouble in placing them,
as we do nuts that we crack better than those we buy cracked. In optical
effect, there is not much difference between them and the best ordinary
instruments. We employ one stereoscope with adjusting glasses for the
hand, and another common one upon a broad rosewood stand. The stand may
be added to any instrument, and is a great convenience.

Some will have none but glass stereoscopic pictures; paper ones are not
good enough for them. Wisdom dwells not with such. It is true that
there is a brilliancy in a glass picture, with a flood of light pouring
through it, which no paper one, with the light necessarily falling _on_
it, can approach. But this brilliancy fatigues the eye much more than
the quiet reflected light of the paper stereograph. Twenty-five glass
slides, well inspected in a strong light, are _good_ for one headache,
if a person is disposed to that trouble.

Again, a good paper photograph is infinitely better than a bad glass
one. We have a glass stereograph of Bethlehem, which looks as if the
ground were covered with snow,--and paper ones of Jerusalem color