A photographer, to be able to produce a good picture, must be a true painter in the highest sense of the word; therefore, a painter ought to know the right qualities about a good photograph, whether he knows the mixing of the chemicals, or length of exposure, or process of focussing, &c., or not; although, to be able to compete, the tricks of the trade have to be learned. Witness Sarony, Mora, and such men, with their fancy dodges and splendid effects, and Seavey with his unapproachable backgrounds. Thus my title is almost superfluous, for painting and photography, requiring the same direction of talent, are already united; only it may be of a little service to hear a painter publicly avow the marriage which is so constantly being consummated on the quiet. It is in your work, as in ours, the doom to be often annoyed with talented triflers who dip a finger into all the sciences, and are for ever ready to dispute the point with the originators--buyers of brains, who imagine that their cash gives them full liberty to find all sorts of faults, or suggest improvements upon the worker's designs; who will not buy unless their idiotic improvements are executed to the last letter, and who afterwards lay the whole blame of the spoiling of the pie upon the baker, when the guests condemn. Having a direct object in view, I need not trouble you about chemicals or lenses, aurora lights, or secrets that you all now know much better than I could for years unborn, but come direct to what is of vital interest to us both in our wedded state-viz. the seeking how we may put as much as possible of the soul of nature, with her innate force of feeling and motion, into our pictures; the men, modern and ancient, who may best aid us by the examples and teachings they have left as a legacy to us; a quiet consideration of what they really have done for us; a right straight look at the men themselves, unbiassed by veneration or prejudice, with a consideration as to how much we have taken advantage of the legacies left to us. The first aim of our investigation is therefore The Exact Imitation of Nature--_i.e._ the outward form and appearances of nature, the body, in fact, of that mystic Deity whom all men worship, no matter what is their dogma, whether they have a creed or whether they be creedless. Secondly, The Feeling, Sentiment, or Sensations of Nature--how her appearance touches us, as we look upon her in the wealth and loveliness of her colouring; also how we may keep that sentiment alive in our light and shade. Here the painter, with his colours, gets a better hand and a long start ahead of the photographer, engraver, and etcher; and it is here that, if those workers in light and shade can keep the sentiment as well as the painter in colours, they gain a double and richer triumph--the triumph of a racer who has been heavily and unfairly handicapped at the beginning of the race.