Small, insignificant, and undecipherable as types appear to inexperienced eyes, yet, when we reflect upon the astonishing effects they produce, they forcibly remind us of that beautiful parable of the grain of mustard-seed, "which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." But, casting theory aside, we will endeavor to demonstrate the advantages which not only the establishment before us, but the whole literary world, bona fide, derives from a cheap, ready, and never-failing supply of type.

By possessing an ample store of this primum mobile of his art, a printer is enabled, without waiting for the distribution or breaking up of the type of the various publications he is printing, to supply his compositors with the means of "setting up" whatever requires immediate attention-literary productions, therefore, of every description, are thus relieved from unnecessary quarantine, the promulgation of knowledge is hastened, the distance which separates the writer from the reader is reduced to its minimum.

But besides the facility which the possession of abundance of type gives both to the publisher and to the public, the printer's range, or, in other words, the radius, to the extent of which he is enabled to serve the world, is materially increased; for with an ample supply he can manage to keep type in "forms" until his proofs from a distance can be returned corrected. In a very large printing establishment, like that before us, this radius is very nearly the earth's diameter; for Messrs. Clowes are not only enabled, by the quantity of type they possess, to send proofs to the East and West Indies, but they are at this moment engaged in printing a work regularly published in England every month, the proof-sheets of which are sent by our steamers to be corrected by the author in America!

Again, in the case of books that are likely to run into subsequent editions, a printer who has plenty of type to spare can afford to keep the forms standing until the work has been tested; and then, if other editions are required, they can, on the whole, be printed infinitely cheaper than if the expense of composition were in each separate edition to be repeated-the publisher, the printer, and the public, all therefore, are gainers by this arrangement.

In by-ways, as well as in high-ways, literary laborers of the hum. blest description are assisted by a printing establishment possessing abundance of type. For instance, in its juvenile days, the "Quarterly Review" (which, by the way, is now thirty years old) was no sooner published than it was necessary that the first article of the following number should go to press, in order that the printer might be enabled, article by article, to complete the whole in three months. Of the inconvenience to the editor attendant upon this "never-ending-still-beginning" system, we deem it proper to say nothing our readers, however, will at once see the scorbutic inconvenience which they themselves must have suffered by having been supplied by us with provisions, a considerable portion of which had unavoidably been salted down for nearly three months. Now, under the present system, the contents of the whole number lie open to fresh air, correction, and conviction are ready to admit new information-to receive fresh

facts to so late a moment, that our eight or ten articles may be sent to the printer on a Monday with directions to be ready for publication on the Saturday.

But notwithstanding all the examples we have given of the present increased expenditure of type, our readers will probably be surprised when they are informed of the actual quantity which is required.

The number of sheets now standing in type in Messrs. Clowes' establishment, each weighing on an average about one hundred pounds, are above sixteen hundred. The weight of type not in forms amounts to about one hundred tons-the weight of the stereotype plates in their possession to about two thousand tons: the cost to the proprietors (without including the original composition of the types from which they were cast) about 200,000l. The number of wood cuts is about fifty thousand, of which stereotype casts are taken and sent to Germany, France, &c.

are cast.

Having mentioned the amount of stereotype plates in the establishment, it is proper that we should now visit the foundry in which they The principal piece of furniture in this small chamber is an oven, in appearance such as is commonly used by families for baking bread. In front of it there stands a sort of dresser; and close to the wall on the right, and adjoining the entrance door, a small table. The "forms" or pages of types, after they have been used by the printer, and before the stereotype impression can be taken from them, require to be cleaned, in order to remove from them the particles of ink with which they have been clogged in the process of printing. As soon as this operation is effected, the types are carefully oiled, to prevent the cement sticking to them, and when they have been thus prepared, they are placed at the bottom of a small wooden frame, where they lie in appearance like a schoolboy's slate. In about a quarter of an hour the plaster-of-Paris, which is first daubed on with a cloth and then poured upon them, becomes hard, and the mixture, which somewhat resembles a common Yorkshire pudding, is then put into the oven, where it is baked for an hour and a half. It is then put into a small iron coffin with holes in each corner, and buried in a caldron of liquid metal, heated by a small furnace close to the oven the little vessel containing the type gradually sinks from view, until the silvery glistening wave rolling over it entirely conceals it from the eye. It remains at the bottom of this caldron about ten minutes, when being raised by the arm of a little crane, it comes up completely encrusted with the metal, and is put for ten minutes to cool over a cistern of water close to the caldron. The mass is then laid on the wooden dresser, where the founder unmercifully belabors it with a wooden mallet, which breaks the brittle metal from the coffin, and the plaster-of-Paris cast being also shattered into pieces, the stereotype impression which, during this rude operation, has remained unharmed, is introduced for the first moment of its existence into the light of day. The birth of this plate is to the literary world an event of no small importance, inasmuch as one hundred thousand copies of the best impressions can be taken from it, and with care it can propagate a million! The plates, after being rudely cut, are placed on a very ingenious description of Procrustesian bed, on which they are by a

machine not only all cut to the same length and breadth, but with equal impartiality planed to exactly the same thickness.

The plates are next examined in another chamber by men termed "pickers," who, with a sharp graver, and at the rate of about sixteen pages in six hours, cut out or off any improper excrescences; and if a word or sentence is found to be faulty, it is cut out of the plate and replaced by real type, which are soldered into the gaps. Lastly, by a circular saw the plates are very expeditiously cut into pages, which are packed up in paper to go to press.

We have already stated that in Messrs. Clowes' establishment the stereotype plates amount in weight to two thousand tons. They are contained in two strong rooms or cellars, which appear to the stranger to be almost a mass of metal. The smallest of these receptacles is occupied entirely with the Religious Tract Society's plates, many of which are fairly entitled to the rest they are enjoying, having already given hundreds of thousands of impressions to the world. It is very pleasing to find in the heart of a busy, bustling establishment, such as we are reviewing, a chamber exclusively set apart for the propagation of religious knowledge; and it is a fact creditable to the country in general, as well as to the art of printing in particular, that, including all the publications printed by Messrs. Clowes, one-fourth are selfdevoted to religion. The larger store, which is one hundred feet in length, is a dark omnium gatherum, containing the stereotype plates of publications of all descriptions. But even in this epitome of the literature of the age, our readers will be gratified to learn that the sacred volumes of the Established Church maintain, by their own intrinsic value, a rank and an importance, their possession of which has been the basis of the character and unexampled prosperity of the British empire. Among the plates in this store there are to be seen reposing those of thirteen varieties of Bibles and Testaments, of numerous books of hymns and psalms, of fifteen different dictionaries, and of a number of other books of acknowledged sterling value. We have no desire, however, to conceal that the above are strangely intermixed with publications of a different description.

On the whole, however, the ponderous contents of the chamber are of great literary value; and it is with feelings of pride and satisfaction that the stranger beholds before him, in a single cellar, a capital, principally devoted to religious instruction, amounting to no less than 200,0001.

In suddenly coming from the inky chambers of a printing-office into the paper-warehouse, the scene is, almost without metaphor, "as different as black from white." Its transition is like that which the traveler experiences in suddenly reaching the snowy region which caps lofty mountains of dark granite.

It must be evident to the reader that the quantity of paper used by Messrs. Clowes in a single year must be enormous.

This paper, before it is dispatched from the printer to the binder, undergoes two opposite processes, namely, wetting and drying, both of which may be very shortly described. The wetting-room, which forms a sort of cellar to the paper-warehouse, is a small chamber, containing three troughs, supplied with water, like those in a common laundry, by a leaden pipe and cock. Leaning over one of these VOL. XI.-July, 1840. 27

troughs, there stands, from morning till night, with naked arms, red fingers, and in wooden shoes, a man, whose sole occupation, for the whole of his life, is to wet paper for the press. The general allow. ance he gives to each quire is two dips, which is all that he knows of the literature of the age; and certainly, when it is considered that, with a strapping lad to assist him, he can dip two hundred reams a day, it is evident that it must require a considerable number of very ready writers to keep pace with him. After being thus wetted, the paper is put in a pile under a screw-press, where it remains subjected to a pressure of two hundred tons for twelve hours. It should then wait about two days before it is used for printing, yet, if the weather be not too hot, it will, for nearly a fortnight, remain sufficiently damp to imbibe the ink from the type.

As fast as the sheets printed on both sides are abstracted by the boys who sit at the bottoms of the nineteen steam-presses, they are piled in a heap by their sides. As soon as these piles reach a certain height, they are carried off, in wet bundles of about one thousand sheets, to the two drying rooms, which are heated by steam to a temperature of about 90° of Fahrenheit. These bundles are there subdivided into "lifts," or quires, containing from fourteen to sixteen sheets; seven of these lifts, one after another, are rapidly placed upon the transverse end of a long-handled "peel," by which they are raised nearly to the ceiling, to be deposited across small wooden bars ready fixed to receive them, in which situation it is necessary they should remain at least twelve hours, in order that not only the paper, but the ink should be dried. In looking upward, therefore, the whole ceiling of the room appears as if an immense shower of snow had just suddenly been arrested in its descent from heaven. In the two rooms about four hundred reams can be dried in twenty-four hours.

When the operation of drying is completed, the "lifts" are rapidly pushed by the "peel" one above another (like cards which have overlapped) into a pack, and in these masses they are then lowered; and again placed in piles, each of which contains the same "signature,” or, in other words, is formed of duplicates of the same sheet. A work, therefore, containing twenty-four sheets-marked or signed A, B, C, and so on, to Z-stands in twenty-four piles, all touching each other, and of which the height of course depends upon the number of copies composing the edition. A gang of sharp little boys of about twelve years of age, with naked arms, termed gatherers, following each other as closely as soldiers in file, march past these heaps, from every one of which they each abstract, in regular order for publication, a single sheet, which they deliver as a complete work to a "collator," whose duty it is rapidly to glance over the printed signature letters of each sheet, in order to satisfy himself that they follow each other in regular succession; and as soon as the signature letters have either by one or by repeated gatherings been all collected, they are, after being pressed, placed in piles about eleven feet high, composed of complete copies of the publication, which, having thus undergone the last process of the printing establishment, is ready for the hands of the binder.

The group of gathering-boys, whose "march of intellect" we have just described, usually perform per day a thousand journeys, each of which is on an average about fourteen yards. The quantity of paper

in the two drying-rooms amounts to about three thousand reams, each weighing about twenty-five pounds. The supply of white paper in store, kept in piles about twenty feet high, averages about seven thousand reams; the amount of paper printed every week and delivered for publication amounts to about fifteen hundred reams, (of five hundred sheets,) each of which averages in size three hundred and eightynine and three-eighths square inches. The supply, therefore, of white paper kept on hand, would, if laid down in a path of twenty-two and one quarter inches broad, extend twelve hundred and thirty miles; the quantity printed on both sides per week would form a path of the same breadth of two hundred and sixty-three miles in length.

The ink used in the course of a year amounts to about twelve thousand pounds.

The cost of the paper for the same space of time may be about 108,0007.; that of the ink exceeding 15001.

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

HISTORY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

A History of the Methodist Episcopal Church. By NATHAN BANGS, D. D., Vol. III. From the year 1817 to the year 1828. Embellished with a Portrait of the Author. New-York: published by Mason and Lane. Pp. 471, 12mo.

OUR readers will be pleased to find that this important and elaborate work is verging so rapidly toward a consummation. About a year and a half have elapsed since the first volume was given to the public. This was in due time followed by a second, which, as well as the former, met with a reception which could not but be most cheering to the author and the publishers. And while the earlier volumes have secured general favor, and been read with interest, we can have no fears for the one which now demands our attention. The events which it records belong to the present generation, and a personal interest attaches to them. It will also be borne in mind that the period to which the third volume relates embraces the history of the various institutions of the church, such as missionary, tract, Sunday school, and Bible societies, and the interests of education. The author has prefixed the following "Notice to the reader:"

"The favorable manner in which the first and second volumes of this History have been received, induces me to add a third, in the hope that it may increase the stock of useful information in reference to the work which God has wrought in this country by the instrumentality of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

"In the conclusion of the second volume it was remarked, that it was my intention, when the history was commenced, to bring it down near to the present time, in two volumes; but, as I proceeded in the work, it was found impracticable to fulfil this intention, without such an abridgment as would either compel me to omit some important transactions and edifying incidents, or so to shorten them as to ren der them uninstructive and uninteresting. I was therefore compelled, contrary to my first design, to close the second volume in the year 1816.