To transfer the illustrated lecture from public platform to printed page
is to give permanent form to the ephemeral. To set down in formal black
and white the phrases framed for the informality of speech is to offer
them to a keener scrutiny than they were meant to bear. To reproduce
in miniature, by means of the half-tone engraver's art, pictures that
were intended to meet the eye, enriched by color and projected in a
darkened auditorium, is to reduce mountains to mole-hills and to dim
the brilliancy of nature to a sober gray.
In these volumes The Burton Holmes Lectures undergo a trying
transformation. The words and the pictures are the same, but the manner
of presentation must affect the value and force of both. The appeal
is now made not to expectant auditors in the sympathetic atmosphere of
a place of entertainment, but to readers uninfluenced by the tone and
the inflection of the speaker, and free from the magical influence of
pictures that glow and fade as the traveler tells his tale.
In an illustrated lecture the impression upon eye and ear should be
simultaneous, that the suggestion of travel may be successfully produced.
It may be pardonable to cite, in proof of the completeness of the
illusion, an incident which conveys a convincing compliment to the art
of the illustrated lecture. On the screen a picture of a village at
sunset—a river flows at the spectators' feet—misty mountains rise in
the distance—the calmness of approaching night seems to hover in the
golden twilight. All this simply an effect produced by the projection
of a colored photograph and the utterance of a few suggestive words.
A woman in the audience looks and listens—and then unconscious of the
humor of her words, murmurs to a companion, "Oh, if some one could only
paint that!"
Therefore the author begs that all who read, will, at the same time,
listen with the mental ear to catch the shade of meaning that should be
conveyed by every phrase, and that they will endeavor to project the
illustrations, through the lenses of imagination upon the screen of
fancy, and thus re-magnify the mole-hills into mountains, re-tint the
landscapes and the cities, and restore to the sunset-skies their wonted
wealth of color.
In appearing before a new audience—the reading public—the author is
cheered by the thought that it is an audience, not of strangers, but
of friends, who, as readers in their easy chairs at home, will manifest
toward him the same indulgence that they have shown as auditors in the
orchestra stalls of theaters or the seats of lecture-halls.
The author gladly acknowledges his debt of gratitude to his auditors,
who, by their support and sympathy, have made possible the years of
travel which these volumes represent; and to his fellow-workers whose
efforts have contributed in so large a measure to the success of his
lectures, to Katharine Gordon Breed, who was the first to realize the
possibilities of the art of coloring lantern slides; to Oscar Bennett
Depue, who, with modesty and self-effacement, has devoted himself to
the operating of the illustrating instruments and to the development
of the art of motion-photography, and to Louis Francis Brown, who, with
business ability and tact, has directed the public presentations of The
Burton Holmes Lectures.