In addition to their correctness as true representations of natural forms, photographs have a peculiar value, for which no labour or skill on the part of the artist can compensate. In drawing the sketch of a landscape, or delineating the trees, rocks, and foliage which are near him, or the objects in the middle or remote distance, several hours must be spent. During this period, the landscape and its individual parts are undergoing no inconsiderable change. A breeze may disturb the masses of his foliage, and bend his tree stems, and ruffle his verdure, and throw new reflected lights upon the waving crops, while every direct light is changing in intensity and direction during the culmination or descent of the sun. What he has delineated in the morning will hardly correspond with what he draws at noon, and the distances which at one time are finely marked in aerial perspective, will disappear, or even suffer inversion by variations in the intensity and position of the haze. If cottages, or castles, or buildings of any kind, enter into the picture, the shadows of their projections, and the lights upon their walls and roofs will, in sunshine, undergo still greater variations, and the artist will be perplexed with the anachronisms and inconsistencies _of his choicest materials_. The landscape thus composed in patches will, in its photograph, have a very different aspect, as much in its forms as in its lights and shadows. The truths of nature are fixed at one instant of time; the self-delineated landscape is embalmed amid the co-existing events of the physical and social world. If the sun shines, his rays throw their gilding on the picture. If the rain-shower falls, the earth and the trees glisten with its reflexions. If the wind blows, the partially obliterated foliage will display the extent of its agitation. The objects of still life, too, give reality and animation to the scene. The streets display their stationary chariots, the esplanade its military array, and the market-place its colloquial groups, while the fields are studded with the forms and attitudes of animal life. The incidents of time and the forms of space are thus simultaneously recorded, and every picture from the sober palette of the sun becomes an authentic chapter in the history of the world.[62] [62] These views are well illustrated by the remarkable photographs of the Crimean war.