Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/255

 music arose from design and not from incapability. There is a fine full-length portrait of Child in his academic robes in the Music School Collection at Oxford. The head from this was engraved by J. Caldwall for Hawkins’s ‘History of Music.'

 CHILDE, ELIAS (fl. 1798–1848), landscape painter, was a very prolific artist, painting both in oil and in water colours. He first exhibited in 1798, when he appears to have been residing at 29 Compton Street, Soho, together with James Warren Childe [q. v.], who was probably his brother. From the first he always confined himself to landscape, and achieved considerable success in this line of art. In 1825 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Artists, and exhibited upwards of five hundred pictures at the exhibitions of that society, the Royal Academy, and the British Institution. His pictures were very popular, and always commanded a good sale. He particularly excelled in moonlight effects, and there is an example of this style in the National Gallery of British Art at South Kensington. He exhibited for the last time in 1848, after which date he cannot be traced.

 CHILDE, HENRY LANGDON (1781–1874), inventor of dissolving views, born in 1781, is chiefly known in connection with the magic lantern,’ a piece of apparatus which he was largely instrumental in advancing from a mere toy to a valuable means of recreation and scientific research. At the time when Childe made his first lantern—somewhere near the close of the last century—no real advance had been made in the construction of that instrument since its invention by Kircher, a century earlier. By the use of achromatic lenses and an improved oil-lamp, a considerable improvement was soon effected; but when the lime-light (then known as the ‘Drummond’ light, from its inventor) was made to replace the oil-lamp, the increase in size and brillianc of the pictures exhibited was so great that the lantern could be used as a means of entertainment in the largest halls. In addition to the practical construction of magic lanterns Childe learned, while still quite a young man, to paint on glass with great skill and effect. In this way he was able to prepare slides for his lantern, and the series illustrating astronomy, natural history, costumes of all nations, &c., which he painted and exhibited in his improved lantern, caused his name to stand high as a popular exhibitor during the early years of the present century. Among other places we read of Childe’s exhibitions with his magic lantern at the Sanspareil Theatre, which stood on or near the site of the present Adelphi Theatre; and when the latter was built in 1806 Childe frequently took part in the entertainments given there.

In exhibiting pictures by the aid of a single lantern, the change from one picture to the next is made abruptly; and one slide is seen to push the other out of the way, or else there is an interval of darkness. To obviate these objections, Childe invented, in 1807, his famous method of ‘dissolving views,’ by which one picture appeared gradually to fade away, while another as gradually took its place. This method requires the use of two lanterns, which are slightly inclined toward each other, so that their discs of light coincide upon the screen. Each lantern is provided with a thin metallic shutter, terminating in comb-like teeth, by which the light can be gradually cut off from one lantern while it is being turned on in the other; and in this way by turning a handle the operator causes one picture to melt, insensibly as it were, into another. Childe improved and completed this invention in 1818, and it has continued to hold high popularity down to the present time. The taste for popular lectures on scientific and general subjects set in early in the present century, and we read of the queen (then the Princess Victoria) with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, attending Childe’s entertainment of dissolving views at the Adelphi. During Lent of the years 1837-40 Childe was engaged with his lanterns to illustrate a series of lectures on astronomy given at Her Majesty’s Theatre by Mr. Howel. After the opening of the Colosseum in 1824 Childe was a frequent exhibitor there, and remained connected for a number of years with that institution, which was finally taken down in 1875. It is in connection with the Polytechnic that Childe’s name will be best remembered. That well-known building was opened with his ‘grand phantasmagoria’ in 1838, and he, or his pupils, took an