name several of the prints that showed most conclusive evidence of what I say, but that is not necessary, because others saw these effects as well as I did. But I wish it to be distinctly understood that I have not been at the pains to make these examinations and observations with the view of lessening the artistic merit of these pictures. I unhesitatingly pronounce them the most beautiful achievements of the camera that have ever been obtained by combining artistic knowledge and skill with the mechanical aid of the camera and ability to handle the compounds of photographic chemistry. There is unmistakable evidence of the keenest appreciation of art, and all that is beautiful in it in the production of the negative; and if the artist see or think that he can perfect his work by the aid of the brush, he has a most undoubted right to do it. This question of pure and simple photography has been mooted all the summer, ever since the opening of the French Exhibition, and I am glad that I, as well as others, have had an opportunity of seeing these wonderful pictures, and judging for myself. Photography is truth embodied, and every question raised about the purity of its productions should be discussed as freely and settled as quickly as possible. There was another picture in the exhibition very clever in its conception, but not so in its execution, and I am sorry to say I cannot endorse _all_ the good that has been said of it. I allude to Mr. Robinson's picture of "Sleep." How that clever photographer, with such a keen eye to nature as he generally manifests in his composition pictures, should have committed such a mistake I am at a loss to know. His picture of "Sleep" is so strangely untrue to nature, that he must have been quite overcome by the "sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of _care_" when he composed it. In the centre of the picture he shows a stream of light entering a window--a ghost of a window, for it is so unsubstantial as not to allow a shadow to be cast from its _seemingly_ massive bars. Now, if the moon shone through a window at all, it would cast shadows of everything that stood before it, and the shadows of the bars of the window would be cast upon the coverlet of the bed in broken lines, rising and falling with the undulations of the folds of the covering, and the forms of the figures of the children. In representing moonlight, or sunlight either, there is no departing from this truth. If the direct ray of either stream through a closed window and fall upon the bed, so will the shadows of the intervening bars. Any picture, either painted or photographed, that does not render those shadows is simply untrue to nature; and if the difficulty could not have been overcome, the attempt should have been abandoned. Then the beams are not sharp enough for moonlight, and the shadows on the coverlet and children are not deep enough, and the reflections on the shadow side of the children's faces are much too strong.