Excellent, mid-19^th century souvenir featuring the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. Usually these lenses are found embedded in Civil War bullets drilled to fit one small glass lens showing views of the battlefield or specific monuments.

This particular souvenir is made to replicate a small pair of binoculars. The embedded “Stanhope” lenses (extremely small glass beads with black and white photographic images) show the Ten Commandments on one side and the Lord’s Prayer on the other. Images are clear, however the text is so small that the titles are about all that can be decerned. The more typical images of battlefield monuments are much easier to see. Lenses were made in France.

Stanhopes or Stanho-scopes are optical devices that enable the viewing of microphotographs. A Stanhope lens is a simple, one-piece microscope invented by Charles, the third Earl of Stanhope. It is a cylinder of glass with each end curved outwards, one being more convex than the other. Because its construction is simple and economical, it was popular in the 19th century. In 1857, René Dagron modified the lens by keeping one curved end to refract light while sectioning the other end flat and locating it at the focal plane of the curved side. Dagron used the modified Stanhope lens to mount microscopic pictures.   [jet]

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