both sides one side therefore only is printed. In consequence of this tenuity, when the printed sheets are to be bound into volumes, they are taken separately and doubled, the blank sides touching each other: and they are folded so exactly, as to make the extremities of one page correspond with those of the other, in the same manner as our book-binders proceed: but, contrary to the European mode of binding, all the single edges are so placed as to form the back of the book; the folds make the front, and are never cut. The Chinese books are, in general, covered with neatly manufactured coloured pasteboard; which, for those who are fond of ornamental or splendid binding, are covered with rich and elegant fancy-coloured silk or satin, and sometimes with gold and silver brocade, &c. The folded edges of the leaves are left plain'. SECTION V. The Progress of Printing in America. S1. SPANISH AMERICA.-As colonies were first settled in Spanish America, it may natu * Sir G. Staunton's Embassy to China, vol. iii. p. 107, &c. 8vo edit. Barrow's China, p. 310. Duhalde, Descr. de la rally be expected that the art of printing would be early established there: historians, indeed, are silent as to the time when it was first practised on the American continent; but it is certain that typography was introduced into this: quarter of the globe, at the close of the sixteenth century'. Mention has been made of books printed at Lima, and other cities of the kingdom of Mexico; but as the earliest production of the Mexican press that has hitherto been known, does not bear date till 1571, the introduction of printing can only be fixed a few years before. Mr. Thomas (to whose interesting History of Printing in America we are indebted for our account of American typography) states it, with a tolerable degree of certainty, to have been established in the city of Mexico some years before 15693. Of the Peruvian press, the earliest Chine, tom. 2. p. 250. A similar method of printing is employed in the empire of Tunkin. Exposé Statistique du Tunkin, tom. 1. p. 356. 1 &c. Thomas's History of Printing in America, vol. i. p. 189, 2 Luckombe's Hist. and Art of Printing, p. 41. 3 Vol. II. p. 510. Mr. Thomas has given the title of the book, now supposed to be the earliest printed in America: As this volume does not seem to be known to European Bibliographers, the following description of it may not be unacceptable. Vocabulario En Lengua Castellana y Mexicana, production appears to be the Extirpacion de la Idololatria de Peru, by Father Pablo Jos. de Arriago, which was printed at Lima in 1621; hence it is probable that the art of printing was not introduced long before that time': Mr. Thomas fixes its introduction, about the year 1590. The majority of works published in Spanish America, till within the last fifty years, was on religious subjects; beside which numerous works on history, morals, and classical literature have been printed. A printing-press compuesto por el muy Reuerendo Padre Fray Alonso de Molina de la Orden del bienauenturado nuestro Padre Sant Francisco. Dirigido al muy excelente Senor Don Martin Enriquez, Visorrey destanueva Espana. En Mexico, en Casa de Antonia Spinosa, 1571. This dictionary is a folio volume in two parts,-the first (of 122 leaves or 244 pages) of Spanish and Mexican, and the second (of 162 leaves or 324 pages) of Mexican and Spanish. The license for printing it is dated in 1569, and affords indubitable evidence that a press was then at work in Mexico: the epistle dedicatory is of the same date; and both circumstances shew that the book was two years in the press. A very large cut of a coat of arms (probably that of the Viceroy, to whom the book is dedicated) fills two-thirds of the title-page; the arms are in eight compartments, surmounted with a coronet. A copy of this dictionary is in the possession of Professor Barton, of Philadelphia; and is probably the oldest specimen of Spanish American printing in he United States. 'This at least is the earliest Peruvian book, mentioned by Dr. Robertson, in the list of works procured (some of them with great difficulty) for his History of America; and which are enumerated in the first volume of that work. was introduced into the Spanish part of the Isle of St. Domingo, about the beginning of the seventeenth century; but its use, (as well as that established in the Isle of Cuba many years since) seems chiefly to be confined to the go vernment. § 2. PORTUGUESE AMERICA.-Printing has long been practised in the Portuguese settlements; but the press has been reserved almost exclusively for the use of the government.-Of the state of literature in the Brazils, we have very scanty information: in the year 1792, when Sir George Staunton visited Rio Janeiro, there were but two booksellers in that city, whose shops contained only books on medicine and divinity'. The intercourse at present subsisting between the courts of Great Britain and of the Brazils, it may be expected, will furnish us with more ample information relative to the state of literature in Portuguese America. § 3. THE UNITED STATES.-Until the middle of the eighteenth century, divinity was the principal topic of the books, which issued from the Anglo-American press; a circumstance that may easily be accounted for, when it is recollected that many parts of North America were * Staunton's Embassy to China, vol. i. p. 181. (8vo edit.) The same fact is confirmed by Mr. Barrow's Travels to Cochin China, p. 90. colonized by individuals, who had been compelled to abandon their native country by persecution for their religious tenets. The following list will indicate the places where, and the persons by whom, the art was first practised'. 1639. Cambridge, 1649. Massachusetts, 1674. Boston, Mass2. 1687. Philadelphia [near to], Pennsylvania, 1689. Philadelphia, 1693. New York, SThe same, who removed from Philadelphia. 1709. New London, Connecticut, Thomas Short. Thomas's Hist. of Printing in America, vol. i. p. 149 et seq. 2 In this town the celebrated Benjamin Franklin first worked as a printer, whence he afterwards removed to New York, and thence to Philadelphia. 3 This printer died in 1681; and, being much respected, his memory was honoured by two poems, one of which (by Jacob Capen, afterwards minister of Topsfield, Massachusetts) concluded with the following lines: "Thy body, which no activeness did lack; Now's laid aside like an old almanack; "But for the present only's out of date, ""Twill have at length, a far more active state. "It shall be done when he saith Imprimatur." Whoever has read Dr. Franklin's celebrated epitaph on himself, will have some suspicion that it was taken from this original. Thomas's Hist. vol. i. p. 277. P |