A Manual Of Photography

THE STEREOSCOPE. 309 of the lens, and they are certain of being resolvable into a dis- tinct image of three dimensions. Witli the single camera, taking the precaution named, with two lenses of the same focal length, or with the semi-lenses, stereoscopic pictures may be obtained without difficulty. The magic result of the resolution of two plain pictures into one, possessing to the eye the most positive solidity, is so striking when witnessed for the first time, that it appears to be à deception of the senses. Even when fully accustomed to the phenomena of the stereoscope, there is an indescribable charm in the beautiful pictures, that they are gazed at again and again with increasing admiration. Living forms appear to stand out in all the roundness of life; and where colours have been judi- ciously applied to the daguerreotype or calotype portrait, it is not possible to conceive a more perfect realization of the human form than that which stands forth, prominently, from the back ground of the stereoscopic picture. Statues, in like manner, are almost realized again in their miniature representations. Archi- tectural piles are seen in all that exactness of proportion and gradation of distance, which is, in their minute reproduction, singularly interesting ; and in landscapes, the stereoscope gives us a reformation of every image in apparently the most perfect solidity and truth of distance. In the stereoscope we have at once an instrument which enables us to study many of the phenomena of vision, and to reproduce loved and beautiful objects, or interest- ing scenes, through the agency of those rays by which they were illuminated, in that strange perfection which, in its mimicry of visible external nature, almost baffles the examination of human sense.