orm.
We like a good crayon portrait better for the most part in black and
white than in tints of pink and blue and brown. Mr. Gibson has never
succeeded in making the world like his flesh-colored statues. The color
of a landscape varies perpetually, with the season, with the hour of the
day, with the weather, and as seen by sunlight or moonlight; yet our
home stirs us with its old associations, seen in any and every light.
As to motion, though of course it is not present in stereoscopic
pictures, except in those toy-contrivances which have been lately
introduced, yet it is wonderful to see how nearly the effect of motion
is produced by the slight difference of light on the water or on the
leaves of trees as seen by the two eyes in the double-picture.
And lastly with respect to size, the illusion is on the part of those
who suppose that the eye, unaided, ever sees anything but miniatures
of objects. Here is a new experiment to convince those who have not
reflected on the subject that the stereoscope shows us objects of their
natural size.
We had a stereoscopic view taken by Mr. Soule out of our parlor-window,
overlooking the town of Cambridge, with the river and the bridge in the
foreground. Now, placing this view in the stereoscope, and looking with
the left eye at the right stereographic picture, while the right eye
looked at the natural landscape, through the window where the view was
taken, it was not difficult so to adjust the photographic and real views
that one overlapped the other, and then it was shown that the two almost
exactly coincided in all their dimensions.
Another point in which the stereograph differs from every other
delineation is in the character of its evidence. A simple photographic
picture may be tampered with. A lady's portrait has been known to come
out of the finishing-artist's room ten years younger than when it left
the camera. But try to mend a stereograph and you will soon find the
difference. Your marks and patches float above the picture and never
identify themselves with it. We had occasion to put a little cross on
the pavement of a double photograph of Canterbury Cathedral,--copying
another stereoscopic picture where it was thus marked. By careful
management the two crosses were made perfectly to coincide in the field
of vision, but the image seemed suspended above the pavement, and did
not absolutely designate any one stone, as it would have done, if it
had been a part of the o
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