ld seem extravagant. But, premising that we
are to give a _colored_ stereoscopic mental view of their prospects,
we will venture on a few glimpses at a conceivable, if not a possible
future.

_Form is henceforth divorced from matter._ In fact, matter as a visible
object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form
is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from
different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or
burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in
the loss of color; but form and light, and shade are the great things,
and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct
from Nature.

There is only one Coliseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of
potential negatives have they shed,--representatives of billions of
pictures,--since they were erected! Matter in large masses must always
be fixed and dear; form is cheap and transportable. We have got the
fruit of creation now, and need not trouble ourselves with the core.
Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its
surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as
they hunt the cattle in South America, for their _skins_, and leave the
carcasses as of little worth.

The consequence of this will soon be such an enormous collection
of forms that they will have to be classified and arranged in vast
libraries, as books are now. The time will come when a man who wishes
to see any object, natural or artificial, will go to the Imperial,
National, or City Stereographic Library and call for its skin or form,
as he would for a book at any common library. We do now distinctly
propose the creation of a comprehensive and systematic stereographic
library, where all men can find the special forms they particularly
desire to see as artists, or as scholars, or as mechanics, or in any
other capacity. Already a workman has been travelling about the country
with stereographic views of furniture, showing his employer's patterns
in this way, and taking orders for them. This is a mere hint of what is
coming before long.

Again, we must have special stereographic collections, just as we have
professional and other special libraries. And as a means of facilitating
the formation of public and private stereographic collections, there
must be arranged a comprehensive system of exchanges, so that there may
grow up something like a universal cu