The historical painter, or the more humble artist who delineates the scenes of common or domestic life, will derive from the photographic camera and the stereoscope advantages of equal importance. The hero, the sage, and the martyr, drawn from living originals, may be placed in the scenes where they suffered, or in the localities which they hallowed. The lawgiver of Egypt, though he exists only in the painter’s eye, may take his place beside the giant flanks of Horeb or the awe-inspiring summit of Mount Sinai; and He whom we may not name may challenge our love and admiration amid the sun-painted scenes of his youth, of his miracles, and of his humiliation. The fragments of ancient grandeur which time and war have spared, the relics of bygone ages which have resisted the destructive elements, will, as the materials of art, give reality and truth to the pictorial history of times past, while the painter of modern events can command the most accurate representations not only of the costume, but of the very persons of the great men whose deeds he is called upon to immortalize. The heroes of the Crimean war, whether friends or foes, will be descried in the trenches in which they fought, amid the ranks which they led to victory, or among the wrecks of the fatal encounter in which they fell. The sun will thus become the historiographer of the future, and in the fidelity of his pencil and the accuracy of his chronicle, truth itself will be embalmed and history cease to be fabulous. But even in the narrower, though not less hallowed sphere of domestic life, where the magic names of kindred and home are inscribed, the realities of stereoscopic photography will excite the most thrilling interest. In the transition forms of his offspring, which link infancy with manhood, the parent will recognise the progress of his mortal career, and in the successive phases which mark the sunset of life, the stripling in his turn will read the lesson that his pilgrimage too has a term which must close. Nor are such delineations interesting only as works of art, or as incentives to virtue; they are instinct with associations vivid and endearing. The picture is connected with its original by sensibilities peculiarly tender. It was the very light which radiated from her brow,—the identical gleam which lighted up her eye,—the hectic flush or the pallid hue that hung upon her cheek, which pencilled the cherished image, and fixed themselves for ever there. CHAPTER XI. APPLICATION OF THE STEREOSCOPE TO SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE, AND ENGINEERING.