The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 51 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 51 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

There can be no doubt too that “hoarding” coin goes on to a considerable extent, and greatly augments the scarcity, and consequently the value of the precious metals.  Even the old practice of “making a stocking” is by no means given up in rural districts.  We ourselves, but a few days back, personally witnessed an old crone, the wife of a small, and apparently poor farmer, in a wild pastoral district, bring no less than three hundred sovereigns in a bag to a neighbouring attorney, to be placed by him in security:  her treasure having accumulated till she was afraid to keep it longer at home.  Such examples are by no means so rare as may be imagined.  The failures of so many country banks in 1825 destroyed the confidence of country people in the bank-notes of the present banks, and causes their preference of gold.  The failure of many attorneys, as well as of those country banks which received and gave interest on deposits, and (with the exception of the savings banks, which are very limited in the amount of the deposits they allow) the total absence, in the rural districts of England, of any safe and accessible depositaries for the savings of the economical, such as the invaluable Scotch banks, have tended most injuriously to discourage economy; and where that principle was strongly ingrafted, have converted it into a practice of hoarding,—­have caused that to stagnate in unprofitable masses which, spread through proper channels, would have stimulated new industry and new accumulations, and added both to the wealth of the owner, and to the general stock.—­Ibid.

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INVENTION OF PRINTING.

[Our Correspondent, W.M. of the Regent’s Park, should read the following announcement, which supersedes the necessity of printing his communication.  At least, we do not feel ourselves justified in doing so, without reference to the undernamed German work.]

It is proposed to erect a monument in Mentz, by public subscription and support of all nations, to Gutenberg, the great inventor of the art of printing, and to celebrate the immortal discovery in a grand and becoming style.  The erection is to take place in 1836, being the fourth centenary anniversary of the great achievement, for it is capable of historic proof that Gutenberg communicated his discovery of movable letters to some friends at Strasburg in 1436, to which city he had retired on account of some disturbances in his native place:  vide Schaab’s Geschichte der Erfinding der Buchdruckerkunst, Mainz, 1831, 3 vols. 8vo.  The subscriptions and support, in particular, of printers, booksellers, authors and literary bodies, is solicited.  Kings and princes, in behalf of the best interests of their subjects and of civilization, it is hoped, will not be backward to support so noble a design.  The public will be informed, from time to time, by means of the daily papers and journals, of the progress of the subscription, for which the smallest sums will be received, and the names of the donors entered in a book kept by the Corporation of Mentz, to which all communications are requested to be addressed.—­Foreign Quarterly Review.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.