oped a completely new feature in the invention of printing. One of the chief improvements in typography was the discarding the long s, and every description of contractions, and, at the same time, the cutting of the letters was done with greater neatness and regularity. Among the first improvers of the printing press, the most honorable place may be given to the Earl of Stanhope, a nobleman remembered for his mechanical genius, who applied certain lever powers to the screw and handle of the old press, thereby diminishing the labor of the operative, and producing finer work. Since the beginning of the present century, and more specially within the last twenty years, presses wholly composed of iron, on the nicest scientific principles, have been invented by different men of mechanical genius in Great Britain and America, so as to simplify the process of printing in an extraordinary degree; and the invention of presses composed of cylinders, and wrought by steam power, has triumphantly crowned the improvements in the art. The introduction of steam presses has been furthered by another invention of an accessory nature, now of great value to the printer. Allusion is here made to the invention of the roller, for applying the ink, instead of the unwieldly and insufficient balls. The roller, which is a composition of a glutinous nature, cast upon a wooden centre piece, was invented by a journeyman printer in Edinburgh, and was so much appreciated, as at once to spread over the whole of Britain and the United States.

It is our chief object in this sketch, to give a brief explanation of the process of stereotyping—a process without the aid of which the present, as well as many other works, could not be so extensively or so cheaply circulated through the country. Stereotyping appears to have been invented simultaneously by different persons in various parts of Scotland and England during the last century. When properly made known it was hailed with acclamation by the printing and publishing world; but, as experience developed its powers, it was found to be strictly applicable only to a particular kind of work. In putting up types, they are lifted one by one, and built into a little case held in the hand of the compositor, who, by the accumulation of handfuls, makes up a page, and lays it with the face uppermost, on a table. After being wedged at

the foot and side into an iron frame, and corrected, the page is carried to the press for working, and when the whole of the impression is off, it is brought back to the table, and the types distributed into their places. When the page has to be stereotyped, the same process of putting up is gone through, but, instead of being carried to the press, the page is plastered over with liquid stucco to the thickness of about half an inch, so that a level cake is formed on the surface of the types. As soon as the stucco hardens, which it does almost immediately, the cake is separated from the types, and, on being turned up, shows a complete hollow or mouldlike representation of the faces of the types and every thing else in the page. There being no longer any use for the types, they are carried off and distributed. As for the cake, it is put into an oven and baked to a certain degree of heat and hardness, like a piece of pottery. It is next laid in a square iron pan, having a lid of the same metal, with holes at the corners. The pan is now immersed in a pot of molten lead, and being allowed to fill by means of the holes, it is at length taken out and put aside till it cool. On opening the pan, a curious appearance is presented. The lead has run into the mould side of the cake, and formed a thin plate all over, exhibiting the perfect appearance of the faces of the types on which the stucco was plastered. Thus is procured a fictitious page which can be printed from in the same manner as in the case of a real page. Such is the process of stereotyping, or making fixed or stationary types; and now for the utility of the invention.

In most cases of common book work it is best to print from types to the amount of the copies required, and then to distribute the types; but in case of books published in parts, sheets, or numbers, stereotyping frequently becomes necessary. It is easy to perceive the reason for this. When books are published in numbers, it often happens that many more copies are sold of one number than of another, and unless the types be kept up to complete sets in the hands of the publisher, or to print copies according to the increased demand, a serious loss is sustained. The manufacture of stereotype plates is, therefore, simply a means of keeping up fictious types to answer future demands, at an expense infinitely inferior to that of keeping the actual pages standing.

MECHANICAL POWER.

MR. Robert Owen calculates that two hundred arms, with machines, now manufacture as much cotton as twenty millions of arms were able to manufacture without machines forty years ago; and that the cotton now manfactured in the course of one year, in Great Britain, would require, without machines, sixteen millions of workmen. with simple wheels. He calcuates futher, that the quantity of manufactures of all sorts produced by British workmen with the aid of machines is so great, that it would require, without the assistance of machinery, the labor of four hundred millions of workmen.

In the wool manufacture, machines possess an eminent advantage over common wheels. The yarn on thirty or thirty-six spindles is all equally twisted and drawn to the same degree of fineness. The most dexterous spinners cannot twist so equally and so gently twenty slips of yarn from wool of the same quality, as a machine can do twenty thousand.

At one of the cotton mills in Manchester yarn has been spun so fine, as to require three hundred and fifty hanks to weigh one pound avoirdupois. The perimeter of the common reel being one yard and a half, eighty threads or revolutions would measure one hundred and twenty yards; and one hank seven times as much, or eight hundred and forty yards, which multiplied by three hundred and fifty, gives two hundred and ninety-four thousand yards, or one hundred and sixty seven miles and a fraction.

A steam-engine of the ordinary pressure and construction, with a cylinder of thirty inches in diameter, will perform the work of forty horses; and as it may be made to act without intermission, while horses will not work more than eight hours in the day, it will do the work of one hundred and twenty horses;and as the work of a horse is equal to that of five men, it will perform as much as six hundred men can; while its whole expense is only equal to about half the number of horses for which it is substituted.

The only purpose to which steam-engines were first applied was the raising of water from coal-pits, mines, &c. ; but they are now used for many different purposes in

which great power is required. Mr. Bolton applied the steam-engine to his apparatus for coining; and by the help of four boys only, it was capable of striking thirty thousand pieces of money in an hour; the machine itself was made to keep an accurate account of the number struck off.

ON COMMERCE.

THERE is no place in town which I so much love to frequent, as the Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assemblage of my countrymen and foreigners, consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon High Change to be a grand council, in which all considerable nations have their representatives. Factors in the trading world, are what ambassadors are in the politic world. They negotiate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men, that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London; or to see a subject of the Great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages. Sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman, at different times, or rather fancy myself like the old philosopher, who, upon being asked what countryman he was, replied, that he was a citizen of the world.

Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another, and be united together by their common interests.

Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes; the infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippine islands give a flavor to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates. The muff and fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.

If we consider our own country in its natural prospect, without any of the benefits and advantages of commerce, what a barren, uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our share! Natural historians tell us, that no fruit grows originally among us, besides hips and haws, acorns and pignuts, with other delicacies of the like nature; that our climate of itself, and without the assistance of art, can make no further advances towards a plum, than a sloe, and carries an apple to no greater perfection than a crab; that our melons, our peaches, our figs, our apricots, and our cherries, are strangers among us, imported in different ages, and naturalized in our English gardens; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the trash of our own country, if they were wholly neglected by the planter, and left to the mercy of our sun and soil.

Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable world, than it has improved the whole face of nature among us. Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate; our tables are stored with spices, and oils, and wines; our rooms are filled with pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan; our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth; we repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies. My friend, Sir Andrew, calls the vineyards of France our gardens; the spice islands, our hot beds; the Persians our silk weavers; and the Chinese our potters. Nature, indeed, furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life; but traffic gives us a great variety of what is useful, and at the same time, supplies us with every thing that is convenient and ornamental. Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that