photographic data of less value than hasty sketches. The
photograph renders the form truly, no doubt, as far as it goes, but it by
no means renders feelings and is therefore of no practical use (save for
reference) to a painter who feels habitually and never works, without
emotion."

It is very much to be questioned if Mr. Hamerton in the face of what has
since been done with the camera by men who _feel_ and are led by the
emotional in art, would claim a distinction to the painter and deny that
the photographic product was unaffected by the emotional temperament.

A friend shows us a group of his pets, either dogs, horses or children,
done by an "artist photographer." We find it strongly composed, evincing
a clear knowledge of every point to be observed in extracting from the
subject all the picturesqueness there was in it. We notice a soft
painter-like touch, shadows not detailed--simply graded--aerial envelopment
everywhere suggested.

It would be pedantry for the painter to correct the expression of his
friend and suggest that the man who produced the picture was not an
artist. It is the product of a man who felt exactly as an artist would
have felt; an expression of views upon a subject entirely governed by the
principles of art, and the man who made it, by that sympathy which he
exhibits with those principles, is my brother in art to a greater degree
than the painter who, with youthful arrogance, throws these to the winds
"mistaking," as has been cleverly said, "the will-o'-the-wisp of
eccentricity for the miracle working impulse of genius." In whatsoever
degree more of the _man_ and less of the _mechanics_ appear, _in that
degree_ is the result a work of art.

The reliance of photography on composition has provoked an earnest search
for its principles. The photographer felt safe in going to the school of
painting for these principles and accepted without question the best book
written for painters, that by John Burnet, penned more than a century ago
at a time when the art of England was at a low imitative ebb, and unduly
influenced by imitation. This has been abundantly quoted by photographic
teachers and evidently accepted, with little challenge, as final.

The best things, discoverable to the writer, in the field of composition,
have been by the photographers themselves--the best things as well as the
most inane; but in the face of so many results that earnest workers with
the camera produce and cont