Movement in two dimensions : a study of the animated and projected pictures which preceded the invention of cinematography (1963)

6 Dissolving Views That which was now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns and makes as indistinct As water is in water. HAZLITT From the time of its invention in the seventeenth century the magic lantern, as we have seen, was often introduced as an aid to the more elaborate effects of the many forms of moving pictures which provided popular entertainment during the centuries preceding our own. Even the shadow play could not dispense with the lantern in the later stages of its development in Paris. As for the magic-lantern show itself, it became a major amusement, both public and private, throughout the Victorian period. And whereas the impact made by the dioramas, panoramas, and shadow shows of that time can be experienced only at second hand through the accounts of eyewitnesses and a few surviving fragments, the celebrated effects achieved by the lantern can still be enjoyed, for the manufacture of lanterns and slides became so extensive an industry that the most amateur collector fmds no difficulty in acquiring substantial remains of it. During the early years of the nineteenth century the cry of itinerant magiclantern showmen, many of them Italian, was among the commonest sounds in the streets of the larger cities of Europe during the winter months. The name given to their entertainment in England, the Galantee show, derived from the foreigner's cry of 'Galante so, galante so', 'so' being his pronunciation of the English 'show', 'galante' his word for 'fine'. The showmen generally carried a f 81