Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to po or suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time or is like to--this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favourably on the morality of the country?
Jane Welsh Carlyle, The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle: July 1847-March 1848
beauty, comfort, photography, relief