An English Analysis of American Photographs.
A New York house has published photographic views of many of the prominent incidents and men of this war, and the London
Times having received a volume of them, criticises the work in a long article, of which the following is an extract.
The most agreeable subject in the volume, perhaps, is one of a Confederate
Lieutenant of the
Washington family and name — for all the representatives of the
Peter Patrice are and were Secessionists — who was taken prisoner, sitting beside his college friend and relation,
Capt. Custin, of the United States army; while a negro boy barefooted, with hands clasped, is at the feet and between the knees of his master, with an expression of profound grief on his shining face.
The Confederate, in his coarse gray uniform, sits up erect, with a bulldog, fighting face and head.
The
Federal--a fair-haired, thoughtful looking man — looks much more like a prisoner; the
teterrima causa belli, who appears to think only of his master is suggestive enough.
We can see here that the houses in which the better sort of people live in this part of the Old Dominion would not content the humblest of our tenant farmers or freemen; that the
Federal soldiery do not improve in appearance during the war, and that their attention to uniform is of the smallest; and we form some idea of the difficulties of fighting in such a country when we observe that every view in fringed by woods.
Referring to the principal portraits of the collection, the
Times says:
‘
"Turning to the volume of portraits, the eye is first arrested by
Mr. Lincoln, sitting in company with an ink bottle of a table, which does not conceal that fact which he is so often said by the papers " an old, quaint face, sagacious notwithstanding the receding brow; and kindly, despite the coarse, heavy-lipped mouth, but with such axillary arrangements that, in combination with the long-limbed, narrow body, and great extremities, there is a gorilla expression produced by the
ensemble. Next is
Hannibal Hamblin,
Vice-President, who is chiefly interesting on account of what he might become.
Turn over, and
Mr. Stanton gives a sitting for his head alone, the lines of which do not stand comparison very well with the keen, clear outline of
Mr. Seward's features, next to it. Why did not
Mr. Brady give the full face of
Mr. Seward, so that one could see his eye?
In other respects the likeness, though it does not convey that air of "cunning and conceit" which
Priace Napoleon's attache attributed in his to the
Secretary of State, is characteristic and true.
’
Pass over
Mr. Batel, and we come to
Mr. Chase, who is standing with one hand outside his coat, over his breeches pocket, and the other on a plaster of
Paris pedestal, looking as though he were waiting for some one to lend him a little money, and expecting it, too. He has one of the best heads among the
Cabinet, though one cannot help remarking that he has a detect in his eyes, and oddly enough so has
Gen. Butler, and so has
Mr. Jefferson Davis.--It is not too much to say that any stranger would be struck by the immense superiority of the heads and expression of
Mr. Davis, of
General Polk, of
Beauregard, of
Stonewall Jackson, and
Lee, to most of the
Federal chiefs of whom few are at all striking in any way.
McClellan looks small, and anxious, and unhappy;
Blenker stands like a soldier and has the air of being one; and
Burnside seems calm, and self-possessed, and capable; Halleck's head is intellectual, but the face is dreamy and the lower jaw feeble stout, florid, sanguine looking fine, is like a German bass-singer in fine condition, and there is no other to speak of, excepting perhaps Meaguer and
McDowall, in the list of soldiers worth looking at a second time, after we have passed
Banks, the unhappy recipient of
Stonewall Jackson's favors.
The few naval men in the book contrast advantageously with many of the soldiers, but some of the best of the latter are not here. "
Stonewall"
Jackson's likeness is something like that of
Ney — a remarkable " but without the beetle-brows, shaggy and over hanging the full eye, attributed to him."
