PHOTOGRAPHER: "Ah, that may do in ordinary life, ma'am; but in photography it's out of the question entirely!"] The Royal Academy has, in many respects, reformed itself out of all recognition as the institution which provoked and justified this explosion. It is only one of the many evidences which go to prove how much more than a merely comic journal _Punch_ was that he should have contributed as damaging an attack as was ever penned against the principles and policy of the R.A. in the days when it laid itself most open to criticism. There are not many events in the art world in the 'sixties dealt with in so serious a vein. When Frith's _Railway Station_ was purchased in 1863 for £20,000 by a Mr. Flatou, _Punch_ contented himself with calling the purchaser a "Flatou Magico." There are friendly and well-merited memorial notices of John Phillip, R.A., in 1867, and of Alexander Munro, the Scottish sculptor, in 1871, while in 1870 _Punch_ supported the appeal for funds to put up a tombstone to George Cattermole, who died poor. English etching was "up in the market" in 1871. _Punch_ has high praise for Seymour Haden, higher still for Whistler, his "brother-in-law and etching master." The peculiar quality and historic interest of the etchings contained in the portfolio issued by Ellis, of King Street, Covent Garden, have seldom been better described than in this appreciation:-- Whistler has etched the tumble-down bank-side buildings of Thames, from Wapping and Limehouse and Rotherhithe to Lambeth and Chelsea, above-bridge--great gaunt warehouses, and rickety sheds, and balconies and gazebos hanging all askew, and rotting piles and green weeded quays and oozy steps and hards, where masts and yards score the sky over your head, and fleets of barges darken the mud and muddy water at your feet, and all is pitchy and tarry, and corny and coaly, and ancient and fishlike. Such etchings of this queer long-shore reach and marine-store dealers, and ship-chandlers, bonded warehousemen, and boat-builders, ancient mariners, and corn-porters, wherry-men, and wharfingers, Thames-police, and mud-larks, are all the more precious because the beauties they perpetuate are dying out--what with embankments and improvements, increased value of river frontage, and natural decay of planking and piling. Whistler has immortalized Wapping, and given it the grace that is beyond the reach of anything but art. Let all lovers of good art and marvellous etching who want to know what Father Thames was like before he took to having his bed made, invest in Whistler's portfolio. [Sidenote: _Academy Pictures in 1872_] _Punch_ was a great Londoner, and his enthusiasm for an artist who was able to perpetuate the romance and magic of the "ancient river" carries weight. He scores some palpable hits, again, in the "Academy Rhymes," published in 1872, which begin:--