My focussing-glass is ruled with a few perpendicular and horizontal lines with a pencil, and I also cross it from corner to corner, which marks the centre of the glass. These lines always allow me to place my camera level, because the perpendicular lines being parallel with any upright line secures it.
Having taken a picture, I note well the spot of some object near the centre of the picture: thus, if a window or branch of a tree be upon the spot where the lines cross
H. W. D.
Photographic Copies of MSS.—I am glad to find from your Notices to Correspondents in Vol. viii., p. 456., that the applicability of photography to the copying of MSS., or printed leaves, is beginning to excite attention. The facility and cheapness of thus applying it (as I have been informed by a professional photographer) is so great, that I have no doubt but that we shall shortly have it used in our great public libraries; so as to supersede the present slow, expensive, and uncertain process of copying by hand. And it is in order to help to bring about so desirable a state of things, that I send these few lines to your widely-circulated journal.
M. D.
Replies to Minor Queries.
Lord Cecil's "Memorials" (Vol. viii., p. 442.).—Cecil's "First Memorial" is printed in Lord Somers's Tracts. It appears that Primate Ussher, and, subsequently, Sir James Ware and his son Robert, had the benefit of extracts from Lord Burleigh's papers. Mr. Bruce may find the "Examination" of the celebrated Faithfull Comine, and "Lord Cecyl's Letters," together with other interesting documents, entered among the Clarendon MSS. in Pars altera of the second volume of Catal. Lib. Manuscr. Angl. et Hib., Oxon. 1697.