a revolving prism, and at last it was completely effected by curving a stereotype plate.

In these machines two paper cylinders are placed side by side, and against each of them is placed a cylinder for holding the plates; each of these four cylinders is about two feet diameter; on the surface of the plate cylinder are placed four or five inking rollers, about three inches diameter: they are kept in their position by a frame at each end of the plate cylinder, the spindles of the rollers lying in notches in the frame, thus allowing perfect freedom of motion, and requiring no adjustment.

The frame which supports the inking rollers, called the wavingframe, is attached by hinges to the general frame of the machine; and the edge of the plate cylinder is indented, and rubs against the waving frame, causing it to wave, or vibrate to and fro, and, consequently, to carry the inking rollers with it, thus giving them a motion in the direction of their length, called the end motion. -These rollers distribute the ink upon the three-fourths of the surface of the plate cylinder, the other quarter being occupied by the curved stereotype plates. The ink is held in a trough; it stands parallel to the plate cylinder, and is formed by a metal roller, revolving against the edge of a plate; in its revolution, it becomes covered with a thin film of ink; this is conveyed to the plate cylinder, by an inking roller vibrating between both. On the plate cylinder, the ink becomes distributed, as before described, and as the plates pass under the inking rollers, they become charged with colour; as the cylinder continues to revolve, the plates come in contact with a sheet of paper in the first paper cylinder, whence it is carried, by means of tapes, to the second paper cylinder, where it receives an impression on its opposite side, from the plates on the second plate cylinder, and thus the sheet is perfected.

These machines are only applicable to stereotype plates, but they

formed the foundation of the future success of our printing-machinery, by showing the best method of furnishing, distributing, and applying the ink.

In order to apply this method to a machine capable of printing from type, it was only necessary to do the same thing in an extended flat surface, or table, which had been done. on an extended cylindrical surface; accordingly, I constructed a machine for printing both sides of the sheet from type, securing, by patent, the inking apparatus, and the mode of conveying the sheet from one paper cylinder to the other by means of drums and tapes.

I

My friend, Mr. A. Applegath, was a joint-proprietor with me in these patents, and he also obtained patents for several improvements. had given the end motion to the distributing rollers, by moving the frame to and fro in which they were placed. Mr. Applegath suggested the placing these rollers in a diagonal position across the table, thereby producing their end motion in a simpler manner. Another contrivance of Mr. Applegath's was, to place half my inking apparatus on one side the printing cylinder, and half on the other side, in order that one-half the form might be inked on one side, and one-half on the other, and so have a less distance to travel.

Another contrivance of Mr, A. was, a method of applying two feeders to the same printing-cylinder. These latter inventions are adapted to newspaper than to book printing.

more

We have constructed upwards of sixty machines upon our combined patents, modified in twenty-five different ways, for the various purposes of printing books, bank-notes, newspapers, &c. They have, in fact, superseded Mr. Koenig's machines, in the office of Mr. Bensley (who was the principal proprietor of Koenig's patent) and also in the office of the "Times."

It may not be uninteresting to state, that no less than forty wheels were

removed from Mr. Koenig's machine, when Mr. Bensley requested us to apply our improvements.

Having, on the first trial of our machines, discovered the superiority of the inking-roller and table over the common balls, we immediately applied them to the common press, and with complete success; the invention, however, was immediately infringed throughout the kingdom, and copied in France, Germany, and America; and it would have been as fruitless to have attempted to stop the infringement of the patent, as it was found in the case of the Kaleidoscope.

This invention has raised the quality of printing generally. In almost any old book will be perceived groups of words very dark, and other groups very light; these are technically called "monks and friars," which have been "reformed altogether."

The principal object in a newspaper machine, is to obtain a great number of impressions from the same form, or one side of the sheet, and not from two forms, or both sides of the sheet, as in books.

In the Times machine, which was planned by Mr. Applegath, upon our joint inventions, the form passes under four printing cylinders, which are fed with sheets of paper by four lads, and after the sheets are printed, they pass into the hands of four other lads; by this contrivance

Stanhope Press, 250 impressions per hour. Koenig's Machine, 1800, i. e. 900 on both sides.

Cowper's (stereotype), 2400, i. e. 1200 ditto. Applegath and Cowper's (book), 2000, i.e. 1000 ditto.

Ditto (newspaper) Chronicle, 2000.
Herald, 2400.

Times,4000-66 per min.

A variety of machines have been invented by other persons, which have not been attended with sufficient success to make me acquainted with their merits, with the exception of Mr. Napier, who has erected several machines for newspapers.

Although the success of the inventions in which I have been engaged has rendered frequent reference to them unavoidable, I trust I have distinctly assigned to Mr. Koenig the. honour of making the first working machine, and to Mr. W. Nicholson the honour of suggesting its princi ples, and that I have thus fairly stated the origin, the progress, and the suc cess, of the recent improvements in the art of printing.

How delightful is it to take up a TOW delightful is it to take up a work of real power!-to feel, after you have glanced through a dozen pages, that, however you may complain of the perversion of talents, -however you may be fatigued with an exuberance of decoration, you will not sicken at a perpetual exhibition of the most humiliating feebleness! Nine books out of ten that we are compelled to skim over (to read is out of the question) are utterly worthless, the prosings of inauity, -the miserable displays of the most miserable conceit ;-reminiscences that make one curse the existence of such a faculty as memory,-travels that would induce us to regard steamboats and practicable roads as the most fatal products of civilization,-novels that would almost make us cry out upon the benefits of education, and deplore the days when neither footmen nor chambermaids could write their names, much less be the mauufacturers of sentiment in the boudoir, and small wit in the dining room. Onward sweeps the stream of popular literature, carrying into the little havens of thousands of book-clubs and circulating libraries, all the painted and gilded shallops (fragile as the paper boat of the schoolboy) that live for a week in that calm and sunny water, and then are hurried for ever to the black ocean, where the great devourer, oblivion, Hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening

prey.

But when a goodly vessel sweeps down that current, gallant, indeed, with streamers, and light and gay as the insect things that float around,but with her sails set, her yards map-. ned, and her stately prow rushing fearlessly on to the great deeps of time,

then we care not if a myriad pal try barks perish, so that the brave ship live; and happy are we, if, at some distant day, casting our eye over the broad expanse of waters, we behold the noble vessel still sailing proudly along with that glorious fleet,

Whose flag has braved a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze.

"Salathiel" is generally understood to be the production of the Rev. G. Croly-a gentleman who, unquestionably, holds a very distinguished rauk amongst our imaginative writers, whatever estimate may be formed of his more recent attempt, in the peculiar walk of his profession, to expound some of the higher mysteries of prophecy. As a poet, Mr. Croly has fairly earned his laurels. 66 Paris in 1815," and "Catiline," attracted no inconsiderable share of attention, at a time when Byron was the sun of the poetical firmament. They abound in vigorous and original thoughts, clothed in powerful and lofty diction. The elaborate magnificence of their language is, perhaps, too sustained; and the effect of this splendid colouring,

to our minds, scarcely compensates for the absence of repose and simplicity. But still we surrender our feelings to one whom we know to be a master of his art; and we are assured that we listen not to "the sounding brass and the tinkling cym bal" of merely gorgeous words, but that the matter of the poet would bear a more quiet drapery, and, under any shape, would present us an ennobling morality, and an acute perception of what constitutes the beautiful and the true.

"Salathiel" partakes, and very largely, of the merits and the defects of Mr. Croly's poems. Considered as a whole, it does not leave any very enchaining interest upon the mind of the reader; it is occasionally wearisome from the perpetual trumpettone, even of the narrative portions; the wildness and extravagance of many of the incidents, though often sublime, and always spirited in the delineation, place the hero too far above human sympathies; and images of horror are certainly scattered with indiscriminate profuseness, so as to deaden the force of the final catastrophe, weakening our sensibility by their constant demand upon its exercise. Yet, open the work where we may, we shall find some thing vivid and original,-magnificent descriptions, elaborated with the greatest skill,—an intimate knowledge of the incidents and manners of antiquity, founded upon a diligent study of classical and scriptural authorities, yet never ostentatiously paraded, but rendered subservient to the dramatic effect, a pure and manly philosophy, looking down from an intellectual eminence upon the paltry ambition and vain desires of the great mass of mankind.

The mysterious adventures of" the Wandering Jew" appear to present a rich and inexhaustible subject for romantic delineation. But they also require to be treated by no unskilful hand, not only to maintain the verisimilitude of the subject, but to avoid the anachronisms, into which an unlearned writer would be betrayed,

by the attempt to make a living man speak of the infinitely varying events and manners of eighteen hundred years. Salathiel," "the rash and unhappy being who called down upon himself the fearful doom of "Tarry thou till I come," details, in the volumes before us, a very small portion of the incidents of his mysteri ous existence, comprehending only the period from the Crucifixion to the Destruction of Jerusalem. In this brief space of about forty years the hero of the story can scarcely be said to feel the awful curse which is laid upon him,-for he is not yet different from those who seek that home where" the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest," except in a very undefined and dream-like consciousness that he is fearfully exempted from the common lot of humanity.

Salathiel is ac

cordingly not here delineated as the restless and dissatisfied spirit who wanders about the earth, enduring all evils, and bearing all degrada tions, but clothed in a spell which bids defiance to the last outrage of malice or vengeance, and gradually laying up the proudest contempt for those insignificant beings whose brief race of useless labours and miserable pleasures are hurried forward to oblivion, to be repeated by a succession of men with the same pitiful hopes and wasted energies. The "Wandering Jew" of these volumes is a happy husband-a father full of the most anxious cares for his childrena patriot with the most lofty aspira tions for the deliverance of his country-a prince leading his tribes onward to revolt against Roman oppression, and striving with all the energies of an untameable spirit to free the land of the patriarchs from the chains of the conqueror. It is only at intervals that his peculiar destiny is present to his thoughts; and even then it requires to be forc ed upon bis view by some miraculous agency, and not by the living evi deuce of the world constantly chang ing around him, while he remains the same. The interest of the nar

rative is therefore very slightly connected with the isolated feelings, except in anticipation, of a mysterious being doomed to outlive his affections, and to have no sympathies with the frail actors of an ever-shifting scene, which is to him an abiding city. This is a spirit-stirring story of an impetuous, lion-hearted, affectionate, generous hero, struggling against his own destinies and those of his country.

The unhappy offender has a strong sense of the misery of his destiny, and he resolves upon leaving Jerusalem, to escape if possible from the recollection of his nameless crime. He flies to the country of his tribe, with whom he sojourns till the excesses of the Romans hurry the people into insurrection, upon their annual visit to the Holy City at the feast of the Passover. From this moment he is plunged into a perpetual contest with the iron power of the Empire, and often leads his countrymen to splendid but fruitless victories. Throughout the narrative the actual condition of the relation between the conqueror and the conquered is depicted with a masterly hand; and the great variety of customs is indicated with a complete knowledge of this difficult and complicated subject.

There is a great deal of dramatic power scattered through these volumes-sometimes exhibiting itself in impassioned eloquence, sometimes in biting sarcasm, and occasionally in a playful humour, in which the author appears to us singularly felicitous. Of the latter description are the 6th and 7th chapters of the second volume, in which a wild and adventurous character is depicted with a vigour and sprightliness quite worthy of the mind which produced the Flibbertigibbet of Kenilworth. For the loftier exhibition of dramatic force, we should particularly point to the interview of Salathiel with Titus, the scene in the Pirate's cave, and the various attempts of the hero to arouse the Jewish people to a

seuse of their degradation and their duties.

Amongst the fancied domestic misfortunes of Salathiel is the flight of his elder daughter with a Christian Greek. He pursues the fugitives to Rome-is hurried into the power of Nero-escapes from the tyrant at the moment of the conflagration of the city-is tempted into the betrayal of an assembly of Christian proselytes-and being placed in the arena to witness their martyrdom, has to endure the dreadful retribution of a parent's agony, so spiritedly described in the following scene:

"A portal of the arena opened, and the combatant, with a mantle thrown over his face and figure, was led in, surrounded by soldiery. The lion roared, and ramped against the bars of its den at the sight. The guard put a sword and buckler into the hands of the Christian, and he was left alone. He drew the mantle from his face, and bent a slow and firm look round the amphitheatre. His fine countenance and lofty bearing raised an universal sound of admiration. He might have stood for an Apollo encountering the Python. His eye at last turned on mine. Could I believe my senses! Constantius was before me!

An

"All my tancour vanished. hour past I could have struck the betrayer to the heart; I could have called on the severest vengeance of man and heaven to smite the destroyer of my child. But, to see him hopelessly doomed; the man whom I had honoured for his noble qualities, whom I had even loved, whose crime was at worst but the crime of giving way to the strongest temptation that can bewilder the heart of man; to see this noble creature flung to the savage beast, dying in tortures, torn piecemeal before my eyes, and this misery wrought by me,-I would have obtested earth and heaven to save him. tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. My limbs refused to stir.

But my