There was something spiteful in the remarks of the young lady; and at my question of what was meant by heliochromes, she again sarcastically replied, "Oh! nothing but photographs in the natural colours of the objects as pencilled by the sun himself; so, at least, in her extravagant style, says my friend Realia." [7] "Ha!" exclaimed I, "the ultimate triumph of the life-long endeavours of that plucky Frenchman, De Saint-Victor! final fruits of the prix Trémont awarded him by the French Academy!" Bacon looked at me with a smile clearly indicative of his contempt for my helpless ignorance. But all he said was this: "Come inside, please, and you will have something else to see than those rude and perishable experiments of Victor of the nineteenth century." We entered, and I could not trust my eyes. The walls of the building were covered with innumerable pictures, landscapes, portraits, and genre-pieces, some of the figures life-size; and all these pictures were mere photographs, yet photographs differing as much from those that I was familiar with as an oil painting does from a crayon drawing. "Unhappy artists! poor arts!" I exclaimed; "what have you come to at last?" But Miss Phantasia appeared to share my delight no more than my sympathy. "Unhappy artists, indeed," was her reply, "if by such honourable name you designate those knights of the brush whose sole aim and end is the faithful imitation of reality; but do not say poor arts! They have by no means died out, the worthy successors of Raphael and Corregio, of Rubens and Rembrandt, of those whose calling was not to imitate nature, but to idealise it. And that is the vocation of art. Simple imitation is mere handicraft. And although the monuments and statues of living persons are now mechanically taken from photographs, aye, by a common workman who has no notion of art; yet have we sculptors who are genuine artists, creators of the ideal." I quietly accepted the rebuff, and rejoiced to think that all those treasures of art of which my country is so proud had not then, after all, deteriorated in worth; on the other hand, it was to me a matter of little moment that mediocre talents, incapable of rising above the imitation of reality, had been compelled to exchange the brush for the camera obscura; and I had no doubt that their productions would thereby gain--in faithfulness.