First, as to the wonderful nature of the invention.  If a strange planet should happen to come within hail, and one of its philosophers were to ask us, as it passed, to hand him the most remarkable material product of human skill, we should offer him, without a moment’s hesitation, a stereoscope containing an instantaneous double-view of some great thoroughfare,—­one of Mr. Anthony’s views of Broadway, (No. 203,) for instance.

Secondly, of all artificial contrivances for the gratification of human taste, we seriously question whether any offers so much, on the whole, to the enjoyment of the civilized races as the self-picturing of Art and Nature,—­with three exceptions:  namely, dress, the most universal, architecture, the most imposing, and music, the most exciting, of factitious sources of pleasure.

No matter whether this be an extravagance or an over-statement; none can dispute that we have a new and wonderful source of pleasure in the sun-picture, and especially in the solid sun-sculptures of the stereograph.  Yet there is a strange indifference to it, even up to the present moment, among many persons of cultivation and taste.  They do not seem to have waked up to the significance of the miracle which the Lord of Light is working for them.  The cream of the visible creation has been skimmed off; and the sights which men risk their lives and spend their money and endure sea-sickness to behold,—­the views of Nature and Art which make exiles of entire families for the sake of a look at them, and render “bronchitis” and dyspepsia, followed by leave of absence, endurable dispensations to so many worthy shepherds,—­these sights, gathered from Alps, temples, palaces, pyramids, are offered you for a trifle, to carry home with you, that you may look at them at your leisure, by your fireside, with perpetual fair weather, when you are in the mood, without catching cold, without following a valet-de-place, in any order of succession,—­from a glacier to Vesuvius, from Niagara to Memphis,—­as long as you like, and breaking off as suddenly as you like;—­and you, native of this incomparably dull planet, have hardly troubled yourself to look at this divine gift, which, if an angel had brought it from some sphere nearer to the central throne, would have been thought worthy of the celestial messenger to whom it was intrusted!

It seemed to us that it might possibly awaken an interest in some of our readers, if we should carry them with us through a brief stereographic trip,—­describing, not from places, but from the photographic pictures of them which we have in our own collection.  Again, those who have collections may like to compare their own opinions of particular pictures mentioned with those here expressed, and those who are buying stereographs may be glad of some guidance in choosing.

But the reader must remember that this trip gives him only a glimpse of a few scenes selected out of our gallery of a thousand.  To visit them all, as tourists visit the realities, and report what we saw, with the usual explanations and historical illustrations, would make a formidable book of travels.