absence in Flanders we can hardly wonder at the confession he makes over his first translation, that “when all these things came to fore me, after that I had made and written a five or six quires, I fell in despair of this work, and purposed never to have continued therein, and the quires laid apart, and in two years after laboured no more in this work.”

1. THE DAILY NEWSPAPER.

EVERYBODY is agreed that a newspaper-and especially a daily newspaper-is a wonderful thing; that it is a product of modern civilization of quite unique

character and power; but we have grown so accustomed to the wonder that we do not often think of how it has become possible. How does it happen, for instance, that day by day the year round without a hitch the Times newspaper continues to appear as regularly as day succeeds night? The intellectual labour necessary to get together such a mighty work once a day is great, and the mechanical skill is high, but though these are recognized, few people have formed to themselves any distinct conception of how all the various forces are brought into harmonious play, and made to produce at a given hour that wonderful concrete whole The Times. It is easy to understand, with that as with any other paper, that there are forces at work around it aiding the development of the paper as a news or advertising medium. The spread of education, of rapid and cheap communication, the wealth and multiplied wants of a large community, all act together in facilitating the supply of what might be called the mere raw material out of which the newspaper is made. And its regular literary staff gather up the facts worth recording here and there and over the world by the help of all secondary agencies, the railway, the telegraph wire, and the steamboat, so that in a measure with each new facility to intercourse a newspaper gets a new ally. In this collection, and in securing a constant supply, we may recognize great enterprise, great ability, vast experience and skill, yet when all is done, we have by no means accounted for the appearance of the newspaper. In one sense, up to this stage nothing more

has been done than ordinary agencies, such as those a great merchant employs, could accomplish. The difficulties attending the production of a newspaper may be said only to begin when all the material has been collected.

And even then the worst point has not been reached. Supposing all advertisements, correspondence, statistics, facts, and occurrences to be collected, the sorting and arranging of them is not anything absolutely to marvel at, for it is only a kind of work that is done every where, and division of labour and careful organization can accomplish it, and so distribute the work that hardly anywhere will there be any undue strain. And although it is an astonishing and almost inconceivable thing that every letter of every line all through a paper must have been put in its place within a few hours by human hands, that spaces and lines must have been supplied to mark portion off from portion, and that all should be finished in perfect order every day, it is not anything to startle us. The work is skilful that accomplishes such a result, but it is only highly organized division of labour. Each man but does his share of this total.

The real difficulty connected with the production of a newspaper arises after all this has been done. When the matter forming the newspaper has been put into type and made up into its columns and pages, there still remains the labour of taking impressions from these pages on paper to be issued to the public. Here division of labour can have but little influence in

overcoming the difficulty. By human hands, only a given number of impressions could by any possibility be thrown off a single set of types in an hour. This difficulty has had to be faced by newspaper proprietors from the first, and it has increased enormously since population and wealth have so increased, and since the introduction of rapid means of transit, both of which demand a larger supply in a shorter time. In the early part of the present century it was possible to work on, and in some form meet public wants, with a speed of reproduction of only 300 copies an hour, for then the circulation of all newspapers was very limited. Now, however, when all the kingdom is almost within a day's journey of the capital, when wealth has spread so that a great proportion of a vastly increased population can afford to take a newspaper of some kind daily, and when it has therefore become necessary to print the whole of an issue that in former days would have seemed fabulously large, in an hour or two, it is clear that without perfect mechanical aid and steam power in printing the paper, all the previous labour of collecting, arranging, and "setting up," will have been undertaken in vain.

From a very early date, therefore, after the introduction of steam as a motive power, attention was directed to removing this obstacle from the path of newspaper publishing.

2. THE MULTIPLICATION OF COPIES.

The first steam machinery ever used for printing a newspaper was the press erected by Mr. Walter, in 1814, and the first newspaper ever issued from a steam propelled press was the Times of Nov. 29th, 1814. From that day till now the Times has been more or less a pioneer in its efforts to bring to perfection mechanical appliances for multiplying copies of newspapers with extreme rapidity. The most perfect printing machine which exists-the Walter Press-has been invented and elaborated to complete efficiency solely in the office of the Times. It is such a machine as we may say could hardly have been brought to perfection anywhere else, for it could never have been made by the most inventive engineer working only with models. Those who worked out its details had to possess the courage to risk much capital, to endure patiently many disappointments, and, above all, to have constantly before them the practical ends to be attained, so as never to rest satisfied with a half-success. And thus it was necessary that at every stage the machinery should be tried on the work it was actually meant to do, its defects remedied, and its construction simplified. The Walter Press is therefore the outcome of such expenditure, such patience, such constant testing, and as a result, it, or machines made after its principle, must now rapidly take the place of all the older modes of newspaper printing, however rapid; for no other kind of machine is so simple, can do such perfect work, and at