d rules. Success in this art requires personal
skill and artistic taste to a much greater degree than the unthinking
public generally imagine; in fact more than is imagined by nine-tenths
of the Daguerreotypists themselves. And we see as a natural result,
that while the business numbers its thousands of votaries, but few rise
to any degree of eminence. It is because they look upon their business
as a mere mechanical operation, and having no aim or pride beyond the
earning of their daily bread, they calculate what will be a fair per
centage on the cost of their plate, case, and chemicals, leaving MIND,
which is as much CAPITAL as anything else (where it is exercised,)
entirely out of the question.

The art of taking photographs on PAPER, of which your work treats at
considerable length, has as yet attracted but little attention in this
country, though destined, as I fully believe, to attain an importance
far superior to that to which the Daguerreotype has risen.

The American mind needs a waking up upon the subject, and I think your
book will give a powerful impulse in this direction. In Germany a high
degree of perfection has been reached, and I hope your countrymen will
not be slow to follow.

Your interesting account of the experiments of Mr. Wattles was entirely
new to me, and is another among the many evidences that when the age is
fully ripe for any great discovery, it is rare that it does not occur
to more than a single mind.

Trusting that your work will meet with the encouragement which your
trouble in preparing it deserves, and with gratitude for the undeserved
compliment paid to me in its dedication,

I remain, very sincerely,
Your friend and well wisher,
E. ANTHONY.

PHOTOGRAPHY.

CHAP. I.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ART.

As in all cases of great and valuable inventions in science and art the
English lay claim to the honor of having first discovered that of
Photogenic drawing. But we shall see in the progress of this history,
that like many other assumptions of their authors, priority in this is
no more due them, then the invention of steamboats, or the cotton gin.

This claim is founded upon the fact that in 1802 Mr. Wedgwood recorded
an experiment in the Journal of the Royal Institution of the following
nature.

"A piece of paper, or other convenient material, was placed upon a
frame and sponged over with a solution of nitrate of silver; it was
then placed behind a painting on