The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-21 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

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Tice Quarterly Review. No. COIL

The octave of contributions making up the con-
tents of the current number of the Quarterly, will
be found singularly attractive throughout. We
set forth with a reviewer, who leads the way, upon
a Pedestrian Excursion through Switzerland.. And
we end our rather discursive wanderings-afterwards
(through half a dozen diversified subjects) by pausing
for a while, with the reviewer, who closes the pre-
sent series of at ticle, in Palace-yard, Westminster—.
contemplating, with this critic, the probable work
now confront;ng the New Parliament ! Work
which will have, sooner or later, to be got through.
The "peg" for this last disquisition is (if the
broken metaphor may be tolerated) of all old
pegs in the wide world of politics—the well-
thumbed and dog's-eared Chinese Blue-book! The
lucubrations suggesting. the first and rather more
exhilarating topic " Pedestrianism in Switzerland,"
ranging from Albert Smith's well-known and
rather more than "thrice told" Story of Mont
Blanc, to John Ruskin's eloquent rhapsodies about
Mountain Beauty in Vol. iv. of his " Modern
Painters," Other wanderers in the footsteps of
Dr. Syntax, in his search efter the picturesque not
I,eing forgotten—Roving Englishmen like Messrs.
Wills, Hudson, and Shirley—together with saun-
terers from France and Germany, and the eternel,
inevitable and ever delightful Murray, with his
scarlet Handbook. " Dred" ii afterwards re- ,
viewed in au article on " American Slavery"—
Mrs. Beecher Stowe, being spoken of in terms well
befitting one who is at once a most original ro-
mancer and a very practical philanthropist. We
nest take a "turn" through various " Lunatic
Asylums"—reminding us vividly of a Visit of Ca-
riosity to Bedlam, and contrasting strangely in
effect with the aspect of things there mauy years ago
as marked to the gaze of po3terity in a memorable
picture by William Hogarth. " English Political
Satires," from " The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin"
to the- last volume of "Punch, or the London
Charivari," furnish the theme for an agreeable
gossip,_ interspersed with many laughter-moving
quotations." "Roving Life in England" proves
to be not less delightful in its way than " Wander-
ings in Switzerland"—the critic, in this instance,
directing his energies more particularly to the
labour of administering a good humoured castiga-
tion to GeOrge Borrow, in re first of all
" Lavengro," and secondly "Romany Rye ; a
Sequel to Lavengro." The opening of this plea-
sant paper appears to us to be particularly happy,
It is as follows :

"Mr. Borrow is very angry with his critics. They
have attacked Lavengro with much virulence and ma-
lice,' and he relates for their reproof a fable by Yriarte.
The viper says to the'leech, Why do people invite your
bite and flee from mine ?' Because,' says the leech,
• people receive health from my bite and poison from
yours.' There is as much difference,' says the clever
Spaniard, between true and malignant criticism as be.
tween poison and medicine.' This only means that Mr.
Borrow prefers prai.e to censure.—that he derives plea-
surable sensations from the first, and such torments
from the last as are produced by an acrid poison. He
confesses, to be sure, that his work is full of blemishes,
but the adders who sting him are blind as well as deaf,
and have not detected one of them.' This is the uni-
versal cry of every irritated author. In whatever part
the critic had fixed his fang., Mr. Borrow would, doubt-
less, have believed that it was not the seat of his dis-
order, and would have persuaded himself that be was
bitten by a malignant viper instead of by a medicinal
leech. He has, we suspect, the same feeling about
strictures upon his writings that Old Fuller bad about
mortal sickness. 'Often have I thought with myself
what disease I should be best contented of. None please
me.' But the wise and witty divine subjoins an obser-
vation which has not yet found its way into Mr, Bor-
row's philosophy-4 The mark must not choose what
arrow shall be shot against it.' Mr. Borrow proceeds
upon the assumption that the author of a work is the
best judge of its merits and defects, which, if it be true,
authors ought always to be their own reviewers."
If one political reviewer, in the Quarterly, has
fastened thus leech-wise, or viper-wise upon China,
(as already intimated), another (as John Willett,
of the Maypole, would express it) has " tackled''
Persia. A topic, in its turn, now that the war
with Persia has terminated, " stale, flat, and un-
profitable." Seven subjects we have now particu-
larized, and an eighth remains still to be men-
tioned. It is one of the best in the whole of this
readable number of the Quarterly. The subject of
it is "Photography." It is altogether as instructive
as it is entertaining—and it is both decidedly. It
gives us in a few pages a rapid ,but sufficient his-
tory of that New and Exquisite Art—with anec-
dotal memorials of the more memorable incidents
marking its rise and developement. "It may not
be superfluous" the writer says almost at the begin-
ning of his remarks—

"It may not be superfluous to ail our readers to state
that the whole art in all its varieties rests upon the fact
of the blackening effects of light upon certain substances,
and chiefly upon silver, on which it acts with a decom-
posing power. The silver being dissolved in a strong
acid, surf ces steeped in the solution became encrusted
with minnte particles of the metal, which in this state
darkened with increased rapidity. These facts were
first ascertained and recorded, as regards chloride of
silver, or silver combined with chlorine, in 1777, by
Scheele, a native of Pomerania, and in 1801, in connexion
with nitrate of silver, by Ritter of Jena. Here there-
fore were the raw materials for the unknown art ; the
next step was to employ them. And now we are at
once met by that illustrious name to which we have
alluded. Sir Humphrey Davy was the first to make
the practical application of these materials, and to fore-
see their uses. In conjunction with Mr. Thos. Wedg-
wood, only less eminent than his brother Josiah, Sir
Humphrey succeeded, by means of a camera otscura, in
obtaining images upon paper, or white leather prepared
with nitrate of silver—of which proceeding be has left
the most interesting record in the Journal of the Royal
Society for June, 1802."
A little later on he continuos :

" Meanwhile, in 1803, somewhat remarkable experi-
ments were made by Dr. Wollaston, proving the action
of light upon a resinous substance known in commerce
as gum guaicum ;" and in due time another workman
entered the field who availed himself of this class of
materials. The name of Joseph Nic6phore de Niepce is
little known to the world as one of the founders of the
now popular art, his contributions being exactly of that
laborious and rudimental nature which later inventions
serve to conceal. He was a French gentleman of pri-
vate fortune, who lived at Chalons-our-Saone, and pur-
sued chemisty for his pleasure. Except also in the sense
of time, be cannot be called a successor to Davy and
Wedgwood ; for it is probable that the path they
had traced was unknown to him. Like them, however,
he made use of the camera to cast his images ; but the sub-
stance on which he received them was a polished plate
of pewter, coated with a thin bituminous substance. His
process is now rather one of the curiosities of photogra-
phic history ; but, such as it was, it gained the one im-
portant step of rendering his creations perman-ent"

Again, still later, it is added :
" In the meantime the indicretion of an optician re-
vealed to the philosopher of Chalons the fact that M.
Daguerre, a dioramic artist by profession, was pursuing
researches analogous to his own in Paris. This led to
an acquaintance between the two, and finally to a legal
partnership in the present pair.s and possible profits
of the new art. M. Niepce died in 1833 without, it
seems, contributing any further improvements to the
now common stock ; and M. Dagueire, continuing his
labours, introduced certain alterations which finally led
to a complete change in the process. Suffice it to say
that, discarding the use of the bituminous varnish, and
substituting a highly polished tablet of silver, he now
first availed himself of that great agent in photographic
science, the. action of iodine, by means of which the
sensitiveness of his plate was so increased as to render
the production of the image an affair of fewer minutes
than it had previously been of hours. At the same time
the picture, still invisible, was brought to light by the
application of the fumes of mercury, after which a strong
solution of common salt removed those portions of the
surface which would otherwise have continued to darken,
and thus rendered the impression permanent.
"Hera, therefore was a representation obtained in a
few minutes by a definite and certain process, which was
exqui,itely minute and clear in detail, capable of copy.
log nature in all her stationary forms, and also true to
the natural conditions of light and shade."

Had we space for so doing, we would gladly mul-
tiply our extracts from this delightful chapter on
Photography—but must now content ourselves
with but one other quotation. It is this. Quotla
the Reviewer in the Quarterly :
" Under the magician who first attempted to enlist
the powers of light. in his service, the sun seems at
best to have been but a sluggard ; under the sorcery of
Niepce he became a drudge in a twelve•hours' factory.
On the prepared plate of Daguerre and on the sensitive
paper of Fox Talbot the great luminary concentrates his
gaze for a few earnest minutes ; with the albumen-
sheathed glass he takes his time more leisurely still; but
at the delicate film of colodion—which hangs before
him finer than any fairy's robe, and potent only with
invisible spells—he literally does no more than wink his
eye, tracing in that moment, with a detail and preci-
sion beyond all human power, the glory of the heavens,
the wonders of the deep, the fall, not of the avalanche,
but of the apple, the most fleeting smile of the babe, and.
the most vehement action of the man."

It need hardly be added, after our extracts, that
any reader may count upon perusing with pleasure
this admirable little treatise upon Photography.

PRESENT TO THE QUEEN FROM THE KING OF PORTUGAL.
—His Majesty the King of Portugal has just sent over
to this country a present of cattle of a very peculiar
breed to her Majesty Queen Victoria, consisting of s
bull, two heifers, and a bull calf. The animals are of
the most perfect symmetry, and very diminutive, stand-
ing scarcely 40 inches high ; they are of a du* colour,
and in fine condition. The cows are very docile, but the
bull, on being driven from the station to Prince Albert's
model farm at Frogmore, where they are now installed,
exhibited a disposition rather the reverse of that
of his companions, by tossing an unfortunate donkey
about his own size which happened to come in his way.
These Lilliputian animals much resemble the Alderney
or Jersey breed, 1-I.t Near to be scarcely mere thin half
iize.