gress, occur in our daily
experience. Manufacture, agriculture, and commerce would yield us others
quite as impressive. In all this we see that man is finding out and
applying the economy of Nature, and thus that the world is advancing, by
well-directed effort, toward a more natural, and therefore a happier
civilization.

The labor-saving processes of mechanism as applied to Printing are in
the highest degree advantageous and admirable. Once types were cast in
moulds, such as boys use for casting bullets. Now they are turned out,
with inconceivable rapidity, from a casting-machine worked by steam.
Ink and paper, too, are made by machinery; and when the types are set,
we invoke the aid of the Steam-Press, and so print off at least fifty
impressions to each one produced under the old process of press-work by
hand. Machinery, moreover, folds the printed sheets,--trims the rough
edges of books,--directs the newspaper,--and does, in short, the bulk of
the drudgery that used to be done by operatives, at great expense of
time and trouble, and with anything but commensurate profit.

These are facts of familiar knowledge. They indicate remarkable
scientific progress. But the great fact--by no means so well
known--remains to be stated. It is only of late that machinery has been
successfully employed in the most laborious and expensive process
connected with the art of printing,--that, namely, of Composition. In
this process, however, iron fingers have proved so much better than
fingers of flesh, that it is perfectly safe to predict the speedy
discontinuance, by all sensible printers, of composition by hand.

Composition--as probably the reader knows--is the method of arranging
types in the proper form for use. This, ever since the invention of
movable types,--made by Laurentius Coster, in 1430,--has been done by
hand. A movement toward economy in this respect was, indeed, made some
sixty years ago, by Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, inventor of the
Stanhope Press, and of the process of stereotyping which is still in
use. His plan was to make the type-shank thicker than usual, and cast
two or more letters upon its face instead of one. This, his Lordship
rightly considered, would save labor, if only available combinations
could be determined; since, using such types, it would frequently happen
that the compositor would need to make but one movement for two or three
or even four letters. The desired economy, however, was not sec