mon vanished when, just as lunch was fairly begun, a stout, fair-haired, handsome young woman walked in and threw herself into the chair placed for her, exclaiming, "Will you give me some lunch, Aunt Anne? Ah, Anna dear, how are you?" "Why, Gertrude, this is pleasant! Mrs. Philip Kirby, Miss Moore."

"I am delighted to meet you, Miss Moore," bowing to Ethel. "Indeed, I may say I am relieved, for I thought you

might be Mrs. Tom Richardson. She's been in town for a month, on her way south, and I haven't called, so I am trying not to meet her. Fortunately, I never saw her yet, that I know of."

"We met Miss Moore at Jaffrey," said Anna.

"Oh, yes! a lovely place, isn't it, Miss Moore?

"But how did you get into town at this hour?" asked Mrs. Ellery.

TH

HE interesting question has been asked often: Is photography an art? The inquiry cannot be dismissed summarily by a yes or a no. It depends upon the individual photographer. Art is not so much a matter of methods and processes as it is an affair of temperament, of taste, and of sentiment. Although the majority of photographs are hardly to be classed as works of art, it seems to me that this is less due to the nature of the method employed in their production, than to the want of sensibility and æsthetic feeling in the makers; and although knowledge of chemistry and mechanical skill have so much to do with successful photography as to make us sometimes overlook the fact that other and rarer qualifications are needed also, it must not be supposed that the superior lens, the well-lighted room, the excellent plate, the perfect developer, the model toning bath, and all the thousand and one details of ways and means are anything more than ways and means, to be used as the intelligence, experience, and taste of the artist dictate. By the hands of a clever mechanic, good photographs may be made, but not pictures. In the hands of the artist, the photograph becomes a work of art. The process is mechanical, it may be said; but is not this, in a measure, true of all the arts? A painter is not necessarily an artist, nor is

a photographer debarred by the character of his calling from being one. In a word, photography is what the photographer makes it an art, or a trade.

But photography is of especial interest to the artistic world of to-day, for the reason that it has allied itself intimately with one of the most ancient and honorable forms of the graphic arts, that of engraving. Its use in this connection is chiefly for illustration, and the marked recent development of artistic illustration in this country has been chiefly accomplished in the magazine. Photography has got mixed up with engraving, and consequently with illustration in all sorts of ways. At the outset it was simply employed to transfer and reduce the original drawings on to the block for the wood-engraver, thus obviating the necessity of making the drawings on the wood, and giving the artist an opportunity to make a much larger drawing, as well as to use oil colors, water colors, pen and ink, pencil, crayon, or any medium desired, provided it were black and white. prints, paintings, etc., could be beautifully reproduced in this way. The draughtsmen promptly gave their approval to the process, because it took no liberties with their originals. They had always found it difficult to make the small pencil drawings on the wood, and photography permitted them to make their de

signs as huge as they pleased. When mechanical engraving was invented, and photography began to usurp the functions of the engraver, the artists who drew the originals were still better pleased. The faithful camera not only "followed copy" with servile and literal accuracy, but it also reproduced the very brush-marks, mannerisms, "handling" of the delighted but misguided artist. This was interesting, but it is an error to suppose that a style of engraving which brings to light the "handling" of the picture is an improvement. We do not wish to see the means by which a work of art is produced, any more than we wish to know the name of the manufacturer of the brushes with which Millet painted his "Angelus." The heliotype and the many other results of the gelatine process now followed each other in rapid succession. Presently the artists began to photograph their figures, animals, buildings, landscapes, etc., to save the trouble of drawing them. The excuse for this lazy proceeding was the sophistical plea provided by Mr. Muybridge's experiments in instantaneous photography; that is, in plain Engiish, we should represent objects in motion, not as they appear to us, but as they actually are, at a given instant. The results of this nonsense have been distortion, burlesque, and ugliness, as might have been expected. Of late photography has begun to dispense with the services of the draughtsman altogether in the making of illustrations, the electrotype plates being made directly from photographs taken from nature. landscape work, the readers of this magazine have seen some excellent specimens of this class of pictures. So, gradually, the camera has taken upon itself a more and more important function, now encroaching in one direction, now in another; until, at last, the ambitious photographers said to themselves, Why should not we undertake to produce photographic illustrations of some of the literary classics of the day?

The idea was voted good. It was taken up by the Photographers' Association of America, and the song of "Hiawatha" by Longfellow was selected for the first subject. The prize which was

offered for the best illustrations was taken in 1888, by James Landy of Cincinnati. The following year the poem of "Evangeline," also by Longfellow, was announced as the subject, and the prize was awarded to J. E. and A. J. Rösch of St. Louis, whose series of three illustrations is reproduced to accompany this paper.

In 1890, when Tennyson's familiar and touching " Enoch Arden" formed the theme for illustration, the prize was carried off by George H. Hastings of Boston, whose trio of compositions is also presented herewith. The three competitions naturally elicited a great deal of interest among photographers, and many interesting pictures were entered. The judges in 1890 were expressly instructed to consider, in determining the relative merits of the photographs submitted to them, their historic accuracy, their originality, their composition, their lighting, and their "technique," that lovely word! - but nothing was said about taste or imagination, that sort of thing being taken for granted. The conditions imposed upon competitors were few and simple. Membership in the association was one of them, and the pictures must be not less nor more than a given number of inches in dimensions.

But few amateur photographers competed, for the difficulties of lighting for portrait and figure work are said to be such as to exclude this class almost entirely. Not many even of the professional photographers' rooms are properly lighted. When a group of figures is in question, the ordinary difficulties of lighting are multiplied. A lady who was one of the unsuccessful competitors for the "Enoch Arden" prize last year has related in The American Amateur Photographer her experience in preparing plates for the contest, and this account is calculated to give a vivid idea of the labor and trials incident to such an undertaking.

It is easy to guess what is the feeling of professional photographers towards amateur photographers. Nothing is more natural than the contempt and aversion entertained by professionals in any special line of work for the presumption of amateurs. Nevertheless, as an outsider,