The brief and all but impromptu Exhibition of the Photographic Society, recently held in the rooms of the Architectural Society, 9, Conduit Street, Regent Street, where the Society's meetings are to be held in future, was one of the pleasantest and most useful expositions in connection with photography that has been consummated for many years. In the first place the idea of an exhibition evening free from the formalities of a _soirée_ was a happy one; the _locale_ was happily chosen; and the whole arrangements most happily successful. Everybody seemed to be pleased; cordial expressions of agreeable surprise were freely exchanged; and there were abundance and variety enough of pictorial display to satisfy the most fastidious visitor. As might have been expected, the works of M. Salomon, exhibited by Mr. Wharton Simpson, were the chief objects of attraction, and during the whole of the evening an anxious group surrounded the collection; and it was curious to remark with what eagerness these pictures were scrutinized, so as to ascertain whether they were examples of photography "pure and undefiled," or helped by artistic labour afterwards. That they are the very finest specimens of art-photography--both in the broad and masterly treatment of light and shade, pose, manipulation, tone of print, and after finish--that have ever been exhibited, is unquestionable; but to suppose that they are photographs unaided by art-labour afterwards is, I think, a mistake. All of the heads, hands, and portions of the drapery bear unmistakable proofs of after-touching. Some of them give evidence of most elaborate retouching on the hands and faces, on the surface of the print. I examined the pictures by daylight most minutely with the aid of a magnifying glass, and could detect the difference between the retouching on the negative, and, after printing, on the positive. The faces of nearly all the ladies present that appearance of dapple or "stipple" which nothing in the texture of natural flesh can give, unless the sitter were in the condition of "goose flesh" at the moment of sitting, which is a condition of things not at all likely. Again, hatching is distinctly visible, which is not the photographic reproduction of the hatch-like line of the cuticle. In support of that I have two forms of evidence: first, _comparison_, as the hatchings visible on the surface of the print are too long to be a reproduction of the hatch-like markings of the skin, even on the hands, which generally show that kind of nature's handiwork the most. Besides, the immense reduction would render that invisible even under a magnifying glass, no matter how delicate the deposit of silver might be on the negative; or even if it were so, the fibre of the paper would destroy the effect. Again, the hatchings visible are not the form of nature's hatchings, but all partake of that art-technical form called "sectional hatchings." I could