Suf

Neither Booth nor Eginton patented on this head, on an application made above a year ago to one of the first men the world has produced in his line. fice it to say, that Sir Joshua Reynolds, with a protecting hand, generously assisted him in his invention in a manner truly great and noble. . . . Mr. West, too, with a mind superior to professional prejudices, indulged the artist with the use of one of his pictures (Jupiter and Europa '), from which he has taken the first piece which he dares submit to the inspection of the public, numbers of former productions having been laid aside from the many improvements which the art has undergone within the last year." In the title-page of this curious work, we read that a specimen of the Art "may now be inspected at the inventor's house near Golden Square, admittance gratis, price of the pamphlet Is."-a form of invitation not unknown to patrons of art of the present day.

the invention they practised. Booth insists on taking us into his confidence and telling us frankly why. He says it has been a matter of "surprise to some people" that he has not. Had he given no reason we might perhaps have shared in the "surprise." As it is we find it difficult to reconcile the reason with the facts. He says that if he had patented his invention he must have disclosed the secret in his specifications; but unless there were two Joseph Booths, both artists of Lewisham, flourishing at the same time, our friend Joseph must excuse us for being very imperfectly satisfied with the explanation. A Joseph Booth, of Lewisham, artist, if we can trust the record of the Office of the Great Seal, obtained in the year 1792, Letters-Patent for an invention, the nature of which he was by a special Act of Parliament (32 Geo. III. c. lxxiii.) allowed to keep secret. It was for "a machine or apparatus, and certain chemical compositions invented by him, for the purpose of making various kinds of woollen cloths and other articles." I have the specification of the patent (No. 1,888) before me, and I see from it that in pursuance of the act Lord Darnley and a Mr. Nicholson have examined our artist, and certify in an affidavit that the specification, amended at their suggestion, "fully, completely, and accurately describes the whole and every part of such invention and discovery, and the method of using and employing the same for the uses and purposes therein set forth." We run through the specification, from which the seal of secresy has long since been removed, and find that whatever "other articles" may have been invented by the patentee, he has said no word that can be construed into the description of any method of chemically and mechanically painting in oil.

Four years elapse before we catch sight of our artist friend again. He is evidently prospering. His society has been formed, and Pollaplasiasmos has become Polygraphy; the very title, as I pointed out just now, adopted for Eginton's process at Soho. The lapse of time has left the artist as didactic but unfortunately as uncommunicative (about picture painting) as ever. He is now publishing a second pamphlet; it is without date, but assigned by the learned in such matters in the British Museum to 1788. He pens this time

An Address to the public on the Polygraphin oil colours, by a chemical and mechanical ic Art, or the copying and multiplying pictures process, the invention of Mr. Joseph Booth, portrait painter.

Utque artes pariat Solertia nutriat usus.

We have no space left to record the wanderings of our hero in his second Booth's pamplet concludes with an ad- manifesto, in which he praises his art as dress to his patrons. He tells them that "having a tendency to strengthen reli"he has lately refused a very advantageous gious principles and conceptions, and to offer made by a foreign power," for the improve the morals of the people. . . . A establishment of his art "in a place where taste for the fine arts," he observes - and he was assured of the greatest success.' the sentiment was probably a novelty then But no terms can induce him to leave" is incompatible with ferocity of manhis native country in expectation of the ners. It even restrains the fierceness of patronage and protection of foreigners, war. . . . Painting in particular is favourmore especially as he is well assured he able to virtue. " and so on. The will be amply rewarded in throwing him- man is incorrigible as ever, and we lay self for support in his undertaking on down the second pamphlet, like the first, that candour and liberality which have without having in any way improved our ever been the characteristic of Britons. knowledge of the process he invented. He has already received the most flatter- This source of information failing us, ing proof of the justness of his sentiments we revert naturally to the neighbourhood

LIVING AGE.

VOL. III. 127

*

婆

of Soho. So long as the Heathfield work- against such a supposition, and several room remained closed, there was ground arguments in favour of it." The paper of of course for hope that within it would be one ("The Stratonice ") furnished a strong found the very instruments that had been probability of the antiquity of the picture. used in the manufacture of the pictures. It was shown by a letter from the present The idea must indeed have impressed proprietors of the mills where it was itself with singular force upon the minds manufactured that it must have been made of those interested in the matter, when prior to 1794. we find a writer, usually so careful as Mr. The general discussion at the Society's Smiles, including in the list of articles meeting was led off by Dr. Diamond, who which presented themselves to those who cited the opinion of one of our most comat last, on the 4th May, 1862, got access petent authorities, Mr. William Smith, to the chamber an "extemporized cam- deputy chairman of the National Portrait Unhappily, to the few persons Gallery, to the effect that the pictures who (among them were Sir Francis Smith" were not produced either by engraving, and Mr. Woodcroft) entered the workroom drawing, or painting, or by any method so long closed, no such object was appar- of which he had any knowledge. They ent, carefully as every nook and corner of the premises was searched. The only optical apparatus to be seen were three or four lenses with paper mounts, and these were lying about in drawers.

era!"

bore no traces of any handwork what ever." Much interest was expressed on the production by the speaker of a Cata logue of the Exhibition of Joseph Booth and the Polygraphic Society at 381, Strand. The rest of the discussion was hardly profitable, the critics selecting for their attacks precisely those points of the story on which it was exceptionally strong. One gentleman, who objected that in the early days of photgraphy “no lens existed capable of producing a sharp impression," found apparently no one at the meeting to remove his doubts. He receives a reply, however, a few days after, in the British Journal of Photog raphy, somewhat in the style of the Yorkshireman who accounted for a par ticular phenomenon by "dooting the fact." The answer, the editor says, “is simple; the image is not sharp, but presents precisely the appearance that would be anticipated of an uncorrected lens of a particular character, that is to say, taken by the aid of a quartz spectacle lens (pebble), an instrument very likely to have been used."

if

With the unsuccessful search in Watt's workroom the attempts to collect evidence in the neighbourhood of Soho seem to have ceased, and the photographic world, in which the rumoured discovery had made a stir, prepared for a discussion over what materials had come to light. On the first night of its winter session in 1863, the rooms of the London Photographic Society were crowded, and Sir Francis made his statement, which it is needless to say was listened to with the deepest interest. When the sensational part of it had been winnowed out of the story, the modest tone in which the speculations of the speaker had been put forward earned for him perhaps still heartier admiration. The evidence in the shape of products of the Lost Art was of course subjected to the severest scrutiny. The more the paper pictures were examined the more wonderful and extraordinary they appeared. As if to destroy at a blow The meeting at the Society's rooms by the theories of those who maintained that no means exhausted the discussion, and they were simply copper-plate engravings pamphlets had to be exchanged before all coloured after some expeditious method, parties could receive even imperfect satis it was found that the whole picture could faction. One by Mr. M. P. W. Boulton be wiped out with a sponge as a boy's (grandson of Matthew Boulton), pubsums are rubbed off a slate! The British lished in 1865, went far to clear up all Journal of Photography, one of the high- the points as to which we can even now est authorities I suppose upon the mat- feel sure. Adopting a species of arguter, was obliged some days after the ment especially applicable to the case, meeting to content itself with thus sum- he made the eye the arbiter in the disming up the status of the pictures that had been found: "There is no direct evidence proving them to have been produced by photography. On the other hand, there is nothing which militates

Lives of Boulton and Watt.

pute as to the silver plates, and proved that the "sun picture of old Soho," before 1791, was a daguerreotype of Winsor Green, taken by his aunt, Miss Wilkinson, in 1840. He did this by the simple expedient of appending to his pamphlet a lithograph copy of the picture on the sil

any man ever wronged the widow and the orphan, he did."

"I will tell you now," she said, "and you must promise me not to be vexed that I have not spoken of it before. Of While Mrs. Prescott was saying this, ourse you were a boy at the time, and I Sir Stephen was walking up and down could not mention it; then as years went the room trying to grasp this unexpected on, and all connection between us was revelation. Suddenly he stopped. broken, I grew almost to forget that such a circumstance had ever happened, and it appeared a pity that you should be given occasion to think less of your uncle. That was the only reason, Stephen. You know, do you not, that I have never kept anything from you? There has been always the most perfect confidence between us."

"The mother was not his wife then?" "Stephen, how could she be ?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I am so astounded at this, and that you could keep it to yourself all these years, that I am prepared to hear anything."

"Do you mean to tell me, mother, that you never did anything for this boy, but let the whole cost and burden of his maintenance rest upon this old Mr. Despard?"

Stephen!" and here Mrs. Prescott's tears came to her assistance; but her son took no notice of them.

“I—I did all I could," she sobbed; "I deprived myself of what ready money I possessed at the time to send to Mr. Despard-five hundred pounds, which afterwards got the young man his commission; and I gave the old man this living, a great thing for a struggling London curate, for that was all he was before; and surely it was far better that the boy should be brought up respectably as the adopted son of a clergyman, than that it should be known that he belonged to nobody."

"Belonged to nobody, mother! he belonged to us. Now I can solve the riddle which has puzzled me all my life. Uncle Bernard's speculations were made to leave something to this boy. He knew the wrong he had done him, and I suppose he guessed rightly that, with no claim to justice, the lad had little chance of getting it given to him by his family."

Mrs. Prescott put her hands over her ears. "I won't listen," she exclaimed; "I shall go mad! After all I have sacrificed and done for you, Stephen, to turn around like this upon me. Oh, I am indeed punished!" and she rocked her self to and fro.

But Stephen seemed dead to everything but his sense of the injury which Leo had sustained.

She was a low, bad woman," said Mrs. Prescott, taking no notice of his excitement; "she deceived your uncle in every way. He met her at some of the places he used to frequent, and was struck with her appearance and took her away with him. She never knew what his real position in life was, or she would not have left him, which she did just before your grandfather's death. Not "What opinion could Mr. Despard knowing what to do with the child, your have formed of us?" he exclaimed; uncle asked Mr. Despard to give it shel-"what must he have thought of me, ter for a little time, and, from some rea- inheriting all my uncle had to leave, yet son, with Mr. Despard it remained until not caring whether his son was alive or your uncle's death, when, in a letter dead?" which he left for me, I first heard of the "Really, Stephen, you are the most circumstance. While I was considering unreasonable person I ever met with. what was best to be done, Mr. Despard So far from having a bad opinion of us, wrote offering to adopt the boy, and the few letters that Mr. Despard sent me bring him up as his own son. were filled with expressions of gratitude, only too glad to accept the offer, for at that he was permitted to have the boy, that time, God knows, I had enough on whom he spoke of as being the greatest my hands. Oh, your uncle was cruel, comfort of his life. Oh, how I wish now very cruel! He is dead and gone, Ste-that I had never consented to come here! phen, and I wish to forgive him; but if I had a presentiment of evil from the

I was

first, and though I fought against it, as I have done through life wherever your wishes were concerned, a shudder ran through me each time I thought of the odious place."

"Well, mother, I cannot understand you. My only wonder is that you could ever rest anywhere; the fact-alone of keeping such a thing from me would have been sufficient, I should have said, to worry you to death."

"Our anxieties do not kill us, Stephen, or I should have been in my grave long ago. Sometimes," and here her tears began afresh, "I think there is very little for me to live for."

"I see we have talked enough for tonight," Sir Stephen said impatiently, as the bell.

he

rang "Of course you will not think of mentioning the subject to any one, Stephen. You see that the young man himself knows nothing of it. It would be cruel to undeceive him; he seems SO very happy and contented, far more than

But her son interrupted her.

"For Heaven's sake, mother, say no more. Leave me to decide how I shall act for the future."

The sternness of his face and manner frightened her into silence, until, startled by a knock at the door, she said, "Who can that be?"

CHAPTER XXV. 1

66 ALL SOUND TILL WE'RE SIFTED." THE next morning, having despatched a messenger to Sharrows sufficiently early to prevent Hero's visit, Sir Stephen, at the appointed time, presented himself at Aunt Lydia's cottage, thereby so startling the old lady that some time elapsed before she knew what she was saying to him, or what he was saying to her. By chatting about Mallett, the people he had met there, and the pleasure it gave him to come among them, he gave her time to recover her composure, and, with a view of leading up to the subject, he at length mentioned Leo's name. Immediately Aunt Lydia's face changed and her manner altered; so, laying aside all further reserve, he said,

"Miss Despard, I am a very poor diplomatist, and I am sure you understand straightforwardness far better than anything else; therefore you must forgive any seeming bluntness, if I come to what I have to say without more preamble."

Poor Aunt Lydia's heart seemed to beat quicker at every word. Could Sir Stephen have heard what she had said about him and ero, and had he come to say that it was false, or, worse still, that it was true?

"Until last night," he went on," I was "Only Davis. I rang for her to come perfectly ignorant of the debt of gratitude to you. I will assist you to your room." which I and my family owe to you and Many things connected with this dis- your brother. From some mistaken moclosure seemed to hurt and irritate him. tive, my mother never told me that my That his mother, between whom and him- uncle, Sir Bernard Prescott, had left a self he had believed perfect confidence to son, and until I came down here, except exist, could keep an important secret like as rector of Mallett, I never heard of Mr. this from him, was sufficiently startling Despard. Now that I am made aware of -and for what reason? Why was he to his generosity and goodness to my uncle's be kept in ignorance? Who had so great son, I am grieved beyond measure that I a right to know? Well might Miss Des- cannot tell him, that what must have pard wish to avoid him in her conduct seemed unfeeling, selfish neglect, arose he saw the reflection of her brother's solely from total ignorance of the facts. feelings. The odd thing was, that after My mother's life had been one long sacremaining silent, that is, if she had re- rifice of self to duty, so that I know her mained silent for all these years, she silence was caused by an idea that she should suddenly speak to Hero. What was acting rightly. She says that defercould be her motive? This thought per- ence to Mr. Despard's wishes was her plexing him considerably, he determined principal reason for not speaking to me, to write a note asking Hero to oblige or doing anything in the matter.' him by not keeping her appointment, as, "It is quite true; she only acted as from a conversation he had had with his my dear brother always desired that she mother, he intended paying Miss Des- would," exclaimed Aunt Lydia, whose pard a visit himself, and by going at the anger had vanished before Sir Stephen's time she had appointed to see Hero, he truthful, earnest manner. "Antony was hoped in all probability to find her at most grateful that you never interfered, but let him bring up Leo as if he were indeed our own boy. Ah! Sir Stephen, if ever my poor brother made an idol, it

home and alone.