The “London Stereoscopic Company” has produced some very beautiful paper stereographs, very dear, but worth their cost, of the Great Exhibition.  There is one view, which we are fortunate enough to possess, that is a marvel of living detail,—­one of the series showing the opening ceremonies.  The picture gives principally the musicians.  By careful counting, we find there are six hundred faces to the square inch in the more crowded portion of the scene which the view embraces,—­a part occupied by the female singers.  These singers are all clad in white, and packed with great compression of crinoline,—­if that, indeed, were worn on the occasion.  Mere points as their faces seem to the naked eye, the stereoscope, and still more a strong magnifier, shows them with their mouths all open as they join in the chorus, and with such distinctness that some of them might readily be recognized by those familiar with their aspect.  This, it is to be remembered, is not a reduced stereograph for the microscope, but a common one, taken as we see them taken constantly.

We find in the same series several very good views of Gibson’s famous colored “Venus,” a lady with a pleasant face and a very pretty pair of shoulders.  But the grand “Cleopatra” of our countryman, Mr. Story, of which we have heard so much, was not to be had,—­why not we cannot say, for a stereograph of it would have had an immense success in America, and doubtless everywhere.

The London Stereoscopic Company has also furnished us with views of Paris, many of them instantaneous, far in advance of the earlier ones of Parisian origin.  Our darling little church of St. Etienne du Mont, for instance, with its staircase and screen of stone embroidery, its carved oaken pulpit borne on the back of a carved oaken Samson, its old monuments, its stained windows, is brought back to us in all its minute detail as we remember it in many a visit made on our way back from the morning’s work at La Pitie to the late breakfast at the Cafe Procope.  Some of the instantaneous views are of great perfection, and carry us as fairly upon the Boulevards as Mr. Anthony transports us to Broadway.  With the exception of this series, we have found very few new stereoscopic pictures in the market for the last year or two.  This is not so much owing to the increased expense of importing foreign views as to the greater popularity of card-portraits, which, as everybody knows, have become the social currency, the sentimental “green-backs” of civilization, within a very recent period.

We, who have exhausted our terms of admiration in describing the stereoscopic picture, will not quarrel with the common taste which prefers the card-portrait.  The last is the cheapest, the most portable, requires no machine to look at it with, can be seen by several persons at the same time,—­in short, has all the popular elements.  Many care little for the wonders of the world brought before their eyes