The manufacture of paper was not much encouraged at home, even so late as in 1662; and the following observations by Fuller are curious, respecting the paper of his times:—­“Paper participates in some sort of the characters of the country which makes it; the Venetian, being neat, subtile, and court-like; the French, light, slight, and slender; the Dutch, thick, corpulent, and gross, sucking up the ink with the sponginess thereof.”  He complains that the paper-manufactories were not then sufficiently encouraged, “considering the vast sums of money expended in our land for paper, out of Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened, were it made in our nation.  To such who object that we can never equal the perfection of Venice-paper, I return, neither can we match the purity of Venice-glasses; and yet many green ones are blown in Sussex, profitable to the makers, and convenient for the users.  Our home-spun paper might be found beneficial.”  The present German printing-paper is made so disagreeable both to printers and readers from their paper-manufacturers making many more reams of paper from one cwt. of rags than formerly.  Rags are scarce, and German writers, as well as their language, are voluminous.

Mr. Astle deeply complains of the inferiority of our inks to those of antiquity; an inferiority productive of the most serious consequences, and which appears to originate merely in negligence.  From the important benefits arising to society from the use of ink, and the injuries individuals may suffer from the frauds of designing men, he wishes the legislature would frame some new regulations respecting it.  The composition of ink is simple, but we possess none equal in beauty and colour to that used by the ancients; the Saxon MSS. written in England exceed in colour anything of the kind.  The rolls and records from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, compared with those of the fifth to the twelfth centuries, show the excellence of the earlier ones, which are all in the finest preservation; while the others are so much defaced, that they are scarcely legible.

The ink of the ancients had nothing in common with ours, but the colour and gum.  Gall-nuts, copperas, and gum make up the composition of our ink; whereas soot or ivory-black was the chief ingredient in that of the ancients.[13]

Ink has been made of various colours; we find gold and silver ink, and red, green, yellow, and blue inks; but the black is considered as the best adapted to its purpose.

ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN MANNERS.

The following circumstances probably gave rise to the tyranny of the feudal power, and are the facts on which the fictions of romance are raised.  Castles were erected to repulse the vagrant attacks of the Normans; and in France, from the year 768 to 987, these places disturbed the public repose.  The petty despots who raised these castles pillaged whoever passed, and carried off the females who pleased them.  Rapine, of every kind were the privileges of the feudal lords!  Mezeray observes, that it is from these circumstances romancers have invented their tales of knights errant, monsters, and giants.