see his

can read if put to it, but they would orator can really move a popular asnever do it for the mere fun of the sembly unless he lets them thing. They have other pastimes. The boots. He must not sneak into a pulplace of books in the providential order pit, or cower behind a reading-desk, or of the world has been grossly exaggermix himself up with a table-cloth, but ated by book-makers. Look out at boldly come out on to the open platlarge upon the whole world, pry into form and let the people see him, from men's lives, examine their banker's the crown of his head to the sole of his pass-book, travel in our self-governing feet. Now it is very difficult to see the colonies, talk to your next-door neigh- boots of an Elizabethan. There is albor, go to the oval, pay gate-money at ways something a little puzzling in the a football match, and you will have no point of view of an old writer that puts mind to manuder about books, their you off. Tennyson would have been ministry, and their mission. But very angry if anybody had told him though exaggeration and exaltation outright that he was a greater poet should be avoided, books, none the less, than Milton, and yet many a sorrowful do play a part, though not the leading heart has found a pleasure in reading part, in the human comedy. There are "In Memoriam" which "Lycidas" many who, having formed this reading could never have given them. Shakehabit, are seldom less unhappy than speare is supreme for his poetry, his when they have settled themselves in passion, and his worldly wisdom, but their chairs with a real live book in it will hardly be pretended that his their hands; and, provided the book be method of characterization satisfies alive, it does not matter a tinker's the year 1897. Ibsen is more interestcurse though the author be dead. ing to the man of the hour.

Where the living author most feels the competition with his dead brother is that the dead authors have all undergone, or are quickly undergoing, the painful process of being "weeded out," whereas the living authors (God bless them!) are all alive together, bobbing and smiling, the good and the bad, those destined to live and those foredoomed to die there they all are, flaunting their vanities, vending their wares; in short, living authors from whom you must pick and choose. Consequently, whilst it seldom happens to a "general" reader to read a bad dead author, he must frequently read a bad living one; and he thus learns to associate grip and style and humor, and all the unspeakable delights of literature, with the past, and is apt hastily to assume that no one is fit to compare with the dead but sceptred sovereigns who rule us from their urns. This is a terribly unfair test to which to submit the living author. On the other hand, to be alive counts for something. Let us never forget that. Nor do the dead have it all their own way. It is an advantage to be near your audience. I once heard John Bright say that no

Turning particularly to the old novels, what do we find? First this-that they are nearly all dead. To say that nobody reads them all would be dangerous; for there is always somebody in some odd corner of the world reading, or pretending to read, everything. I do not believe any book is ever absolutely forgotten. There is still a sale for these old things. People buy them out of the catalogues, where they crop up under the title "Old Novels”—forlorn creatures with sentimental titles, in odorous calf. They still beckon one with a withered finger to come and share their solitude and make love to them after the fashions of 1750. But it cannot be done, and when they tumbie out of their parcel you speedily perceive you have bought so much lumber. To draw up a list of eighteenth-century novelists that are still alive would be to invite censure. ut, roughly speaking, when you have named Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Goldsmith and Madame D'Arblay, you cannot be very severely handled. If you are fond of classification, you might make another list and include Mrs. Charlotte Lennox,

scribe a new hotel furnished from top to bottom by Messrs. Maple, of the Tottenham Court Road. There is no feud between the old fiction and the new. Mankind will always love a good story well told. It will never quarrel with a Tolstoi or neglect a Wilkie Collins; it can read both "Emma" and the "Massarenes," though no doubt it will go on reading "Emma" after it has forgotten the "Massarenes." Cocky is good-very good-but he (perhaps) is not good enough to live; that was his own opinion, and it is mine. But, for all that, he is good-very good -and if people are found reading the "Massarenes" a hundred years hence, if I can then be pleased I will be.

There is no room in the republic of letters for "chuckers-out." Old Father Time is the only "chucker-out" allowed upon the premises. No other is needed. He has a ruthless besom; but till he spies us out and sweeps us away as does an angry housemaid a cobweb, let us chirp merrily over our cups and give everybody his chance of winning the favors of that good-natured idiot-the reading public.

AUGUSTINE Birrell.

From Knowledge. PHOTOGRAPHY IN NATURAL COLORS. Like the cry of "Wolf! wolf!" raised by the thoughtless shepherd, the announcement that "photography in natural colors" is at last discovered has been so often made that all men who know aught of photography are apt to shake their heads in graver doubt when each new claimant comes. Like "psychic" photography, the photography of color has been so largely the subject of fraud and misrepresentation that even an honest worker must expect to be met with scepticism-especially when he makes a mystery of his methods, and talk of largely capitalized syndicates is in the air. This is the case with the latest discoverers; and though one of them has succeeded in inducing Sir Henry Trueman Wood and Captain Abney to vouch for the apparent ac

curacy of his statements, neither of these gentlemen knows the materials employed to produce the effects that have been shown.

In briefly dealing with this subject I am bound to give a few words to its earlier history, but will confine my survey entirely to the direct or purely photographic methods. The indirect or three-color method, by analysis and subsequent synthesis of the light-color effects, is well known as a practical and commercial success. The earliest recorded observations of photography in natural colors are of much earlier date than the invention of photography itself, for while the Daguerreotype was not announced until 1839, the principle or direct color photography was made public by Scheele and Senebier (1777-1782).

These workers discovered that chloride of silver deposited on a smooth surface was darkened by the action of light; but they also went much further, and found that if the light-colored chloride were exposed to a spectrum of white light the coloring of the silver salt bore considerable resemblance to the colors of the spectrum by which it was produced. From that day to this the selective coloring of silver chloride has been the basis of many attempts to perfect photography in natural colors. Seebeck, of Jena, brought the subject prominently before the public in 1810; while Ritter, Wollaston, (Sir) Humphry Davy, and Thomas Wedgwood, all worked upon and reported their experiments in 1801-2. The four last named applied their energies mainly, if not entirely, to the darkening effect, without regard to color; but the difficulties were the same in regard to both branches of the subject, and the main difference is that although the fundamental difficulty of "fixing" the image has been overcome in ordinary photography, it has remained insurmountable in the color work. When once it had been found that silver chloride was changed from (practically) white to (practically) black by the action of light, it was a simple matter to see that by shielding a portion of the surface behind a stencil, a silhouette portrait, or a fern-leaf, a picture of the shield in white upon

worker is said to have rendered some of his "heliochromes" permanent, but I can find no trace of his having claimed so much; no permanent works are known to exist, and it is known that many of his pictures were very fleeting. Poitevin, in 1868, stated that the colored image could be "fixed" by means of sulphuric acid; and I believe he gave to the late J. Traill Taylor certain of these colored pictures, which, "kept in a drawer without any special precautions," retained their colors for (at least) several years. But Mr. Taylor found it impossible to fix similar impressions by any application of sulphuric acid that he could make, and I believe that all other experimenters have been equally unsuccessful.

black, would be obtained. Working jects-brightly dressed dolls, etc. This with leaves, it would soon be apparent that great delicacy and gradation of the darkening effect was obtainable, for Iwuile the ribs and veins of the leaf would be represented by white, its thinner parts were distinctly but faintly tinted. Here was the germ of a very beautiful decorative art, even before the camera method was suggested; but the difficulty remained that if the picture were examined or exposed in daylight the fainter portions at once began to be tinted, until gradually the whole sheet became one color, and the picture was lost. For a long time no method of preventing this was discovered, but eventually a solvent was found which would attack and dissolve the silver chloride, but which would not affect the salt in the dark state to which it was reduced by the light's action. Hence, after printing under a leaf, the uncolored silver chloride could be dissolved out and the picture remained as a permanent silhouette.

It might seem as if this method ought to apply to the colored as fully as to the monochrome image, but this is not found possible in practice. In one case there is a definite chemical change, reducing the silver from the chloride to the metallic state. In the other there is a change too subtle for our present chemical and physical knowledge, so that we cannot expect success by this method until science has progressed considerably. By far the most exhaustive scientific work upon the photo-sensitive salts of silver, especially upon their colors, is that carried on by the late M. Carey Lea, who saw no prospect of success as a result.

To return to the earlier days: Sir John Herschel made reports upon his work in 1819, and in 1841 he expressed before the British Association the opinion that his experiments might lead to the production of naturally colored photograms. Robert Hunt, working from 1840-43, published his results in 1844, under the title of "Researches on Light." In 1848, Edmond Becquerel produced some exceedingly sensitive silver surfaces, on which he made pictures in color, not only of the spectrum, but also of natural ob

In March, 1890, Franz Veresc, of Klausenberg, exhibited at the Photographic Institute, Vienna, results on both glass and paper, which were highly praised at the time, and believed to be of great promise. The newspapers of the whole world rang with his fame, but nothing further has been heard on the subject.

The next important announcement, and one that has been fully justified, was made in June, 1891, when Alphonse Berget published, "Photographie des Couleurs par la Méthode interférentielle de M. Lippmann." A preliminary announcement had been made in March of the same year by M. Lippmann himself. The process is totally different, in theory and in practice, from all others, and from the scientific point of view is perfect. It has, however, certain serious practical disadvantages, which I shall shortly mention. The method is based on the "interference" of light waves, and depends upon the idea that if light waves are reflected back along their original path in such a way that they twice pass through a sensitive film, the silver will be deposited in lamina in the thickness of the film; the distance between the laminæ being governed by the wave-length of the light. Thus, every portion of the film has an arrangement of its silver particles in definitely placed strata, and forms, after development and fixation, a light-filter allowing only light of the same wave-length