thus inserted is a shade larger than the rest, in consequence of the mould having shrunk in some degree in the drying oven.

The above is the usual mode of stereotyp ing; but there are other processes, in one of which paper is substituted for plaster of Paris in forming the mould. The mode above described is, however, deemed the most efficient, and is most generally practiced.

The art of stereotyping has operated largely in the multiplication of books, and has done something towards lowering their price, though it is a question whether it has made them cheaper, looking to the real value of a stereotyped edition relatively to one printed from type. It was thought, and indeed it was pretty loudly boasted, at first, that the stereotyper's art was to ensure the lasting correctness of stereotyped editions: it has turned out, after fifty years' trial, that it tends rather to a contrary result. Owing to many circumstances-to the carelessness of the picker in the first instance-to the damage that the plates receive in mounting on the blocks-to the injury inflicted by accident and heavy pressure when packed away in piles in the store-room-to the fracture and abrasion and clumsy attempts at repair, which accompany their exhumation for a second edition-owing to these and similar causes, it happens that stereotyped editions of works which, at their first casting, were tolerably correct, have become in time complete museums of every kind of atrocity and stupidity in the art of blundering that the imagination can conceive. Original "roses" has been stereotyped into "noses,"--an "idler" has been transformed into an "idol" -what was once "witticism" now reads "criticism,"--the "fair Fidele" has been superseded by the "fair Fiddler," and so on. Worse even than this, whole lines have been inserted upside down, and in numerous instances where the last lines of pages had become broken and battered by ill-usage, they have been shaved clean away, to make all neat, and nothing substituted in their place. The cause of a good deal of this mischief is found in the fact, that stereotyped plates, in the mutations of business, get into the hands of speculating blockheads, who care for nothing but turning them to a profitable account, and having no charges of authorship or "composition" to defray, grind off cheap editions from their mutilated plates as fast as the public are geese enough to gobble them up. But there are other causes at work besides the cupidity of knaves and dunderheads-causes which no care can guard

against and no supervision control. One of these are the thousand little accidents by which a letter or a word of a form may become defaced in the working. If this take place on a form of movable types, the press or the machine is stopped, recourse is had to the compositor, and the mischief is repaired in two minutes-but if the injury is done to a plate, it is ten to one that the printer has no means of repairing it on the premises— and if he have, he will pause to consider whether it is worth while to stop his machine, for it may be an hour or more, to repair a trifling damage, whose repairs will cost him perhaps from ten shillings to a pound. In most cases he does not stop, as any of our readers may see by a minute examination of any month's number of those cheap serials, which are weekly publishing by tens or hundreds of thousands, and which are worked from stereotyped plates. We allude to them merely for the sake of illustration-in their case the damage is of very trifling importance, and they must resort to the cheapest means of producing a large impression at a low price; but when the same causes of deterioration are at work in the case of the old classical authors, and our own standard literature, the effect is the reverse of trifling. Students and collectors are now beginning to be aware of the vices of the stereotyper's trade; some have rigidly purged their libraries of stereotyped editions, and even the tyro will regard with suspicion a second edition of any classic printed from stereotyped plates. So well grounded is the objection to the practice of stereotyping standard works that it is fast falling into abeyance: the University Printers of Oxford no longer stereotype their Bibles, but prefer keeping the forms standing in type; and the most respectable publishers in London will incur the expense of re-composition rather than subject an important work to the dangerous liabilities of stereotyping.

But to return to the operations of the Printer. The necessity for rapid printing first urgently felt by the proprietors of the Times newspaper, may be said to have originated the first printing-machine, which was invented by M. Koenig, a clockmaker from Saxony, was constructed in London during the years 1812-13-14, and began its work on the 28th November of the last-named year. Improvements in this machine were made by Cowper, and a rate of speed was obtained equal to 1,800 impressions per hour. In 1815, Koenig set up a machine for Bentley, constructed so as to print the paper on both

sides at the speed of 750 sheets per hour, which was about five times the speed of the hand-press. Improvements followed rapidly -an extraordinary impetus was given to them by the discovery* of a new material for supplying ink to the face of the type, a material consisting of glue and treacle in about equal parts, which, being cast into rollers, the rollers are charged with ink and made to revolve over the surface of the form, upon which they distribute it equally. Cowper and Applegarth now set up machines capable of printing a thousand sheets an hour on both sides and this machine, with some important modifications, yet maintains its ground. We should fail in the endeavor to give the reader an accurate idea of its performance without an engraving. Let it suffice to remark here, that in printing by this machine, the forms to be worked are laid upon a flat iron bed which moves backwards and forwards beneath two large cylinders, having that part of their surface which would else come in contact with the type covered with a blanket. Two smaller cylinders or drums are fixed near the centre of the machine above the large ones, and their use is to carry the sheets evenly from one printing cylinder to the other. For the guidance of the sheets, and their retention in the right position, there is a series of endless tapes revolving on tension rollers, which tapes embrace them firmly in every part of their progress. The forms pass under their respective cylinders at the precise moment to present their inked surface to the sheet strained upon the blanket by the tapes, taking the ink on their route by contact with the rollers which circulate over them. The sheets are supplied by one boy, who feeds them over the first

*This discovery was made, like many others of less importance, by accident. A carpenter, who was also a printer in a small way, having occasion to print a hundred cards on a sudden, and having "ball" in a fit condition for work, extemporized a ball by stuffing a piece of canvas upon which some fluid glue had been accidentally spilled. He

no

cylinder, and received by another, who sits in front of a little platform between the two. For the purposes of book-printing, where accurate register* is required, it is not perhaps desirable to increase the speed of machines much beyond a thousand an hour; but such a rate of production was soon found to be too slow for newspapers. Machines were accordingly made, printing only one side of the paper at a time, which was all the newspaper proprietor required, at the rate of four and even five thousand an hour. But the circulation of the Times demanded the production of copies at the rate of ten thousand an hour. "To meet such a demand required the abandonment of the reciprocating motion of the type-form, and so to arrange it as to make the motion continuous, for which only the circular motion could do. Accordingly, a large central vertical drum or cylinder-in the Times printing-machine this is sixty-four inches in diameterwas set up, to which the columns of type were fixed. This drum is surrounded by eight cylinders, also placed with their axes vertically, upon which the paper is carried by tapes in the usual manner. Thus, in every revolution of the drum, the type-form is successively pressed against each of the eight cylinders; and the type being successively inked, and each of the eight cylinders supplied with paper, eight sheets of paper will be printed in each revolution of the drum. By this machine 50,000 impressions have been taken without stopping; indeed, the vertical machine is capable of almost unlimited extension. Mr. Applegarth offered to the Royal Commission of the Great Exhibition to make a machine which, with the same rate of motion as that of the Times, should print 40,000 sheets per hour, or about eleven sheets between every two ticks of a common clock." To have effected this, he needed only to enlarge his central drum so as to have placed the required additional number of cylinders around it.

that some portion of the advantage gained As machines came into use, it was found by rapidity was lost in the quality of the work. Books printed by the hand-press continued to be superior to any that the machine could produce; and it was seen that the type, and wood engravings especially, wore out faster under the cylinder than under the common press. To meet these

printing generally practicable.

objections, the platten-machine was invented, a most ingenious and masterly contrivance, by which the impression is obtained from the type by precisely the same means as at the hand-press. Though this invention may be regarded as decidedly successful, inasmuch as it produces excellent work-printers still find it expedient to resort to the hand-press for the execution of their chefs d'œuvre. The printing of wood-engravings has become in our day almost an art--many of these are executed with incredible pains and at a serious expense--justice can only be done to them by careful and skilled hands experienced in handling them, and who are under no obligation to produce a great number of impressions in a given time. For work of the highest quality it seems likely that the printer will remain dependent upon the skilful management of his presses, and not his machines.

Among the latest improvements in machines we may allude, in passing, to an adaptation of the letter-press cylinder-machine to the purposes of lithographic printing. This in vention has been matured, after a series of tedious and expensive experiments, and is now working with entire success in a printing-office at Bristol.

Improvements in hand-presses, which have been going on since the close of the last century, seem to have been directed rather towards improving the impression taken from the type than to accelerating the rate of speed. Earl Stanhope was the first who made the whole press of iron, and enabled the pressman to take the impression at one stroke instead of two. Subsequent improvers have done little more than modify his invention by additions of trifling importance, and variations as often for the worse as for the better. There is, however, a press, though who was the inventor we forget at this moment, in which the form inks itself, and by which it is easy for a single hand to do the work of two with ease, which we happen to know from personal experiment made fiveand-twenty years ago. It was at a press of this description that the writings of that moral Malay, Richard Carlile, were for the most part printed.

The most astonishing feat in rapid printing has been performed by the Americans. About six years ago a Philadelphian produced a rotary press, or rather machine, which consisted of a printing wheel, in the broad tire of which a cavity was made for the introduction of the type. This contrivance is applicable only to the printing of cards, which, being placed in

an inclined plane, feed the machine by their own gravitation. Each revolution of the wheel prints a card, and the wheel may be made to revolve five hundred times in a minute, by hand power, thus producing thirty thousand impressions in an hour. It is not pretended that the work thus produced will bear comparison with that accomplished by the ordinary means-but it is said to be as good as is required for pawnbroker's duplicates, railway tickets, &c.

Improvements in type-founding have kept pace with those in printing; and the typefounder is entitled to at least an equal share with the printer in the praise due to modern progress in the art. The type of English and Scotch founders is all that can be desired-so far as beauty and perfection of form are concerned, their art has reached its climax; but in the mechanical processes of casting type they are, or at least were until lately, far surpassed by the French. So far back as thirty years ago, as we have had occasion to know, it was a common thing for a compositor, who had distributed his case full over night to find the identical metal re-cast, and silver white, on returning to work in the morning. French type was even then cast in a perfect state, and immediately fit for use on leaving the matrix, and of the smaller characters some thousands were cast at once. English types, on the contrary, were, and in London foundries still are, cast one at a time, with odd pantomimic demonstrations on the part of the workman exceedingly puzzling to a spectator; and after casting, have to be cut and pared down to the standard size. This tedious process of manufacture has long maintained for English type an abnormal and unreasonable price-a price which enhances the material to ten times its original value by the workmanship bestowed upon it. New processes of casting, analogous to, if not identical with, those pursued in France, have, however, been latterly adopted by some enterprising founders, and are beginning to tell upon prices, which competition will ultimately bring to a much lower level.

But the improvement most profoundly desiderated has yet to be made. We allude, of course, to some invention yet to be devised which shall accelerate the operations of the compositor. Composition is at once the chief source of expense to the printer, and the chief cause of delay in publication. To obviate one or other, or both, of these obstacles, various means have been resorted to, but hitherto without success. Some have imagined that the practice of the stenogra

chines, would help them forward. With a language possessing about 300 characters, movable types would be an unmanageable nuisance. When an European prints Chinese, he does it at twenty times the expense that it costs the Chinaman, who pays "such a thing as tenpence," for engraving a page on a block of soft wood, which would be destroyed under a press or a machine, but from which he can take as many impressions as he likes. All he has to do is to apply his thin ink with one end of his brush, lay his paper on the block, and give it a few rubs on the back with the other end. He never prints on both sides, but working two pages at a time, folds the blank sides inwards, and in binding his books brings the fold to the foreedge.

Eight or nine years ago, considerable hubbub and excitement was raised by the sudden introduction of the process of anastatic printing, which was expected to produce great marvels. It promised great thingsamong the rest, to multiply the drawings of artists without the medium of the engraver. From some cause or other, chiefly, it was said, because it was not applicable to machine work, it did not come into use. It was, in fact, no new invention, but merely an extension of the powers of zincography by the discovery that, by the use of weak nitric acid, drawings made with a certain pigment, and sheets of letter-press, even after they had 'been printed for a considerable time, could be accurately transferred to the zinc plate and worked at the lithographic press. Whether, now that the Bristol experimenter has perfected his lithographic machine, the anastatic process will revive and perform what it promised, remains to be seen.

The public are too well inured to scientific and mechanical marvels to feel much surprised now at new discoveries. They see the electric telegraph printing its own despaches-and if they choose to go to the Polytechnique Institution, they can see a musical performer printing his own extemporaneous voluntaries by means of an electromagnetic apparatus, as he gives them voice under the inspiration of the moment. Perhaps in a little time we may see the stream of "copy" turned on at the printing office at the very instant that the stream of eloquence is turned on at St. Stephen's-the reporter performing on the telegraphic keys instead of the slips of paper. If that should happen to-morrow, no one will think it worth while to be astonished. To get up a sensation now is a harder task than to outrun Old Time in his march, or subdue the lightning to the service of man.

We must close this rambling notice of the printer's art with a word or two on Mr. Stark's book. If the author has not risen to the height of his great argument, and sung the conquests and the glories of the press in elevated strains, he has at least condescended to be accurate, practical, and useful, to the extent of the narrow limits he has assigned himself. For some solecisms in syntax let him stand excused by reason of his evident want of practice as a writer; and visit the blame upon the head of his editor "of the Chiswick Press," who read the proofsheets and did not correct them. We can commend his work, notwithstanding a few trifling faults and short-comings, to the notice of our readers, as a neat compendium of the "Antecedents, Origin, and Results of Printing.'