instantaneously, from points far as well as near, by a simple electric current, governed by machinery, which prints its thought in plain Roman characters, at a rate of speed defying the emulation of the most expert penman.  These, among many illustrations of scientific progress, 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 secured.  Subsequent attempts at combinations were made in England, but all proved abortive.  In the office of the London “Times,” castings of entire words—­devised, I think, by Sterling—­were used, to a limited extent.  It remained, however, for a New-York