In those early days photographers did not trouble themselves much about light and shadow--_i.e._ the subtleties and refinements of light and shadow. To me, an artist, the sight of a good daguerreotype, with its silver lustre, soft light, and indefinite masses of shadow, is infinitely superior to the crude attempts at _carte_-printing in its early stages; the finest studio work of to-day harks back to those chance effects of imperfect knowledge, or time-workings, as the great painter strives to cultivate the freshness of early attempts, or the mellowing upon the canvases of the old painters. I have seen effects hit by chance from young pupils, who regarded them as failures through want of experience, which I would give a great deal to have been able to imitate; and so, the longer a man lives, thinks, and works, the more eagerly he watches immature attempts, and the more he can learn from seeming failures; for when a man is struggling with all his might to get at an object, he is wrestling with an angel, as Jacob did, and though he may be lamed, as Jacob was lamed, yet the failure is so illuminated with a divine light that success may be read between the lines. He thinks he has failed, and that the ground is strewn only with the shattered pieces of his frail armour, whereas it is covered with the jewels which he has torn from his mighty antagonist; as he lies back panting and oblivious from exhaustion, he can see nothing of all this, but to the onlooker it seems a triumph, to the after-gleaners it means success. You all know from experience how photography has grown, what giant strides it has made year after year, and how it is marching on. First a shadow on a metal plate; an impression upon glass, when all that art attempted was a little coloured powder to give it a life-like look; a staring print upon paper, where art sometimes stepped in and painted over. Then the modelling upon the negative, where art must reign supreme, where anatomy must be studied and mind dominate, and which, as far as I can see, has no ending in the way of possibilities. There is no need for a man to use paints and canvases to write artist, in the fullest sense of the term, after his name, if he is master of the art of manipulating a negative; here art begins, after the posing, and has a delicate and very great mission to fulfil. When I think upon the vastness of this field where an artist may wander at will, and how little really has yet been done in comparison to what may be done, I could almost wish that this had been my lot in life rather than what it is. Ambition! why, a man may have the desires of a Napoleon, and yet find relief for them all in the great art of remodelling: but of that anon. POSING