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Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JANUARY, 1843.

N°. CLIV.

ART. I.-1. History and Practice of Photogenic Drawing, or the true Principles of the Daguerreotype. By the Inventor, L. J. M. DAGUERRE, translated by J. S. MEMES, LL.D. 8vo. Lond. 1839.

2. Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate themselves without the aid of the Artist's Pencil. By HENRY FOX TALBOT, Esq., F.R.S. 8vo. Lond. 1839.

3. Die Calotypische Portraitirkunst.

Quedlingburg und Leipzig, 1842.

Von Dr F. A. W. NETTO.

4. Ueber der Process des Sehens und die Wirkung des Lichts auf Alle Korper. Von LUDWIG MOSER, Poggendorff Annalen der Physik und Chemie, Band LVI. 1842. No. 6.

IN

N following the steps of social improvement, and tracing the rise of those great inventions which add to the happiness of our species, we can scarcely fail to recognise the law of progressive development under which the efforts of individual minds are regulated and combined, and by which reason is destined to attain its maximum of power, and knowledge to reach its limits of extension. Under the influence of a similar law, our moral and religious condition is gradually ascending to its climax; and when

VOL. LXXVI. NO. CLIV.

X

these grand purposes have been fulfilled-when the high commission of the Saint and the Sage has been executed-man, thus elevated to the perfection of his nature, will enter upon a new scene of activity and enjoyment.

The supreme authority which has ordained this grand movement in the living world-this double current of our moral and intellectual sympathies-has prepared the material universe as the arena of its development; and all our civil and religious institutions have been organized as instruments by which that development is to be effected. The confusion of tongues-the physical disunion of empires-the rivalries of industrious nations-are among the auxiliaries by which this triumph is to be consummated. The outbursts of the moral and the physical world form a powerful alliance in the same cause; and in the vigorous reactions which they invoke, the highest qualities of our moral and intellectual being are called into play. The war which desolates, and the fire and flood which destroy, undermine the strongholds of prejudice and corruption, and sweep away the bulwarks in which vice and error have been intrenched. Amid convulsions like these, indeed, civilization often seems to pause, or to recede ; but her pauses are only breathing stations, at which she draws a fuller inspiration, and her retrograde steps are but surer footings, from which she is to receive a fresh and onward impulse.

The powers and positions of individuals, too, are all nicely adjusted to the functions they have to discharge. Corporeal frames of every variety of strength-moral courage of every shade of intensity and intellects of every degree of vigour—are among the cardinal elements which are to be set in action. The Sovereign who wields the sceptre, and the Serf who crouches under it, differ only in the place which they occupy in the mysterious mechanism. While one class of agents is stationed amid the heats of friction and pressure, others occupy the quiet points of stable equilibrium; and a larger class forms the inertial mass, or acts as a drag against the stupendous momentum which has been generated. But while busy man is thus labouring at the wheel, the impelling, the maintaining, and the regulating power, is not in him by an agency unseen are all the heterogeneous elements of force harmonized, and the whole moral and intellectual dynamics of our species brought to bear upon that single point of resistance, where vice and ignorance are to be crushed for

ever.

From these general views it is a corollary not to be questioned, that when great inventions and discoveries in the arts and sciences either abridge or supersede labour-when they create new products, or interfere with old ones-they are not on these accounts

to be abandoned. The advance which is thus made involves not only a grand and irrevocable fact in the progress of truth, but it is a step in the social march which can never be retraced. The wants, or the cupidity of a minister, for his ignorance it cannot be, may tax inventions and knowledge-the fanaticism of a priesthood may proscribe education, and even the Scriptures of truth-and the blind fury of a mob may stop or destroy machinery—but cupidity, fanaticism, and rage, have counter checks within themselves which re-act on the springs of truth and justice, and finally crush the conspiracy which they had themselves hatched. If, in the conflict of rival principles, the species gains, and the individual loses, redress can only be looked for in those compensatory adjustments which so often and so strangely reconcile general and individual interests. The same law which closes one channel of labour, necessarily opens up another, and that often through a richer domain, and with a wider outlet; and in every substitution of mechanical for muscular action, man rises into a higher sphere of exertion, in which the ingenuity of his mind is combined with the exercise of his body. He is no longer on a professional level with the brutes that perish, when he ceases to exercise functions which are measured only by so many horse power, and which can be better extracted from so many pounds of coal, and so many ounces of water.

Nor is it a less questionable corollary that when one of the arts is left behind in the race of improvement, and has been lingering amid the sloth and avarice of its cultivators, it can have no claim on the sympathy and protection of the community." Were it the art of building ships, of forging anchors, or of welding cables, to form the defensive bulwarks of the nation, or were it the most trivial manipulation which administers to the personal vanity of the most frivolous, the principle would have the same foundation in truth and justice. But when it is the art of manufacturing food-when the poor and the rich are the antagonists in the combat-and when it involves the life and death of starving multitudes, the crime of protection will, in future ages, be ranked in the same category with that of burning for heresy, or drowning for witchcraft.

Although these observations apply in an especial manner to those great mechanical inventions which have in this country altered the very form and pressure of society, yet they are not less applicable to those remarkable improvements in the Fine

* We would refer the reader to an admirable letter on this subject by Professor Johnston of Durham to the Marquis of Northampton.

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