Last, not least, see what steam has enabled us to do in regard to the food for the mind, both in printing it and afterwards in its distribution.  Look, for instance, to Printing House Square—­to the “Times” newspaper.  In the short space of one hour 20,000 copies are thrown off the printing-machine, and, thanks to the express train, the same day the paper can be read in Glasgow.  Still further in this direction, the value of steam is also shown by its having enabled us to produce cheap literature, so strikingly instanced in the world-famed works of Sir Walter Scott, which we are now enabled to purchase at the small sum of sixpence for each volume—­a result which well shows the application of science to art.

Let us now observe what a varied number of mechanical and agricultural appliances are required to furnish us with this cheap literature.  There is agriculture, in the growth of the fibre that produces the material of which the printing paper is made; then the flax-mill is brought into play to produce the yarn to be woven; then weaving to produce the cloth; after this, dyeing.  Then the fine material is used for various purposes too numerous to mention; and after it has performed its own proper work, and is cast away as rags, no more to be thought of by its owner, it is gathered up as a most precious substance by the papermaker, who shows us the true value of the cast-off rags.  Subjected to the beautiful and costly machinery of the paper-mill, the rags turn out an article of so much value that without it the world would almost come to a stand-still.  Yet further, we have next the miner, who by his labour brings to the surface of the earth the metal required to produce the type for printing; after this the printing-press; and next the chemist, who by certain chemical combinations gives us the ink that is to spread knowledge to the world, by making clear to the eye the thoughts of authors who have applied their minds for the instruction and amusement of their fellow-men.  But we do not end here; consider also that each and all, the farmer, the spinner, the weaver, the chemist, the miner, the printer, and the author, must respectively have a profit out of their various branches of industry, and does it not strike one forcibly what a boon to the world is this all-important application of science to art—­putting within the reach of the poor man and the working man the means of cultivating his mind, and so, by giving him matters of deep interest to think over, keeping him from idleness and perhaps sin (for idleness is the root of most evil), and making him a happy family-man instead of a public-house frequenter.