ly at an end, my
discovery shall soon be made public. This cause, added to the immense
distance between us, hinders me from taking the advantage of your good
offer to get up at New York an exhibition of my results.

Believe me, my dear sir, your very devoted servant,
DAGUERRE.

A prophecy, shrewd in some particulars but rather faulty in others, of
the influence of this new art upon painting, is contained in the
following extracts from a letter of Morse's to his friend and master
Washington Allston:--

"I had hoped to have seen you long ere this, but my many avocations have
kept me constantly employed from morning till night. When I say morning I
mean _half past four_ in the morning! I am afraid you will think me a
Goth, but really the hours from that time till twelve at noon are the
richest I ever enjoy.

"You have heard of the Daguerreotype. I have the instruments on the point
of completion, and if it be possible I will yet bring them with me to
Boston, and show you the beautiful results of this brilliant discovery.
Art is to be wonderfully enriched by this discovery. How narrow and
foolish the idea which some express that it will be the ruin of art, or
rather artists, for every one will be his own painter. One effect, I
think, will undoubtedly be to banish the sketchy, slovenly daubs that
pass for spirited and learned; those works which possess mere general
effect without detail, because, forsooth, detail destroys general effect.
Nature, in the results of Daguerre's process, has taken the pencil into
her own hands, and she shows that the minutest detail disturbs not the
general repose. Artists will learn how to paint, and amateurs, or rather
connoisseurs, how to criticise, how to look at Nature, and, therefore,
how to estimate the value of true art. Our studies will now be enriched
with sketches from nature which we can store up during the summer, as the
bee gathers her sweets for winter, and we shall thus have rich materials
for composition and an exhaustless store for the imagination to feed
upon."

An interesting account of his experiences with this wonderful new
discovery is contained in a letter written many years later, on the 10th
of February, 1855:--

"As soon as the necessary apparatus was made I commenced experimenting
with it. The greatest obstacle I had to encounter was in the quality of
the plates. I obtained the common, plated copper in coils at the hardware
shops, which, of course, was very thin