John Ruskin1888(Ruskin on the Daguerreotype)
Book pages
Google BooksJohn Ruskin
Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts, perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life, Second edition, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1888), Volume 2, p.252-253.
It must have been during my last days at Oxford that Mr. Liddell, the present Dean of Christ Church, told me of the original experiments of Daguerre. My Parisian friends obtained for me the best examples of his results; and the plates sent to me in Oxford were certainly the first examples of the sun's drawing that were ever seen in Oxford, and, I believe, the first sent to England.
Wholly careless at that time of finished detail, I saw nothing in the Daguerreotype to help, or alarm me; and inquired no more concerning it, until now at Venice I found a French artist producing exquisitely bright small plates, (about four inches square,) which contained, under a lens, the Grand Canal or St. Mark's Place as if a magician had reduced the reality to be carried away into an enchanted land. The little gems of picture cost a napoleon each; but with two hundred francs I bought the Grand Canal from the Salute to the Rialto ; and packed it away in thoughtless triumph.
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