A Handbook of Illustration

Introduced to this country, in round numbers, some fifty years ago, Photography has progressed beyond its contemporaries of the present century. It has obtained a hold upon the people, entering equally into their work and their amusements; the speed, the reality, the brilliancy of it fit it peculiarly for the age into which it has been born. It has survived, and will survive, amidst the decay of other things, because of its extraordinary adaptability to changing circumstances, its readiness to meet altering tastes and requirements; versatile in aspect, elastic in its application. Amidst all its adaptations of modern date, in none has it been more successful than in that to which this book is devoted: that wherein photography, directly or indirectly, is employed to introduce into our literature expressions of thought, which are better so conveyed than by written or printed words. Be the language never so rich in words, or the writer's power in using them never so great, a clearer and a more lasting impression may be conveyed, even to the cultivated, and certainly to the popular mind, by the arrangement of lines and markings in such form as may be felt to actually represent the objects, and indicate the relative position and size of other objects or parts of the same.