February 1862

Correctness very rare. It is difficult to get a new shirt made on the measures of the pattern. The value of a carpenter is that he is trained to measure exactly. But Captain Rich told me it is impossible to duplicate the model of a ship. And 't is said the Emperor of Austria, though he sent an architect to Rome to get the dimen- sions of the Sistine Chapel, and sent Mozart to write by ear the score of the Miserere, failed at last to reproduce the perfect musical effect in Vienna. No proof-reader believes that the author can correct his own proof; and I am sure no author believes that any reader of his verses will copy them accurately. An engraver like Raffaelle Morghen is as rare as a painter like Raffaelle Sanzio. The Swedenborgians say with despair that there seems a fatality to hang over Swedenborg's text, that, though with honest purpose, he cannot be correctly quoted by one out of their church. Hence the inestimable value of photography.