at the bottom of this cauldron about ten | stereotype plates of publications of all minutes, when being raised by the arm of descriptions. But even in this epitome a little crane, it comes up completely en- of the literature of the age, our readers crusted with the metal, and is put for ten will be gratified to learn that the sacred minutes to cool over a cistern of water volumes of the Established Church mainclose to the cauldron. The mass is then tain, by their own intrinsic value, a rank laid on the wooden dresser, where the and an importance, their possession of founder unmercifully belabours it with a which has been the basis of the character wooden mallet, which breaks the brittle and unexampled prosperity of the British metal from the coffin, and the plaster-of- empire. Among the plates in this store Paris cast being also shattered into pieces, there are to be seen reposing those of the stereotype impression which, during thirteen varieties of Bibles and testathis rude operation, has remained unharm- ments, of numerous books of hymns and ed, is introduced for the first moment of psalms, of fifteen different dictionaries, its existence into the light of day. The and of a number of other books of acbirth of this plate is to the literary world knowledged sterling value. We have no an event of no small importance, inasmuch desire, however, to conceal that the above as 100,000 copies of the best impressions are strangely intermixed with publications can be taken from it, and with care it can of a different description. For instance, propagate a million! The plates, after next to 'Doddridge's Works,' lie the being rudely cut, are placed on a very in-plates of 'Don Juan:' close to 'Hervey's genious description of Procrustesian bed, on which they are by a machine not only all cut to the same length and breadth, but with equal impartiality planed to exactly the same thickness. The plates are next examined in another chamber by men termed 'pickers,' who, with a sharp graver, and at the rate of about sixteen pages in six hours, cut out or off any improper excrescences; and if a word or sentence is found to be faulty, it is cut out of the plate and replaced by real type, which are soldered into the gaps. Lastly, by a circular saw the plates are very expeditiously cut into pages, which are packed up in paper to go to press. We have already stated that in Messrs. Clowes's establishment the stereotype plates amount in weight to 2000 tons. They are contained in two strong rooms or cellars which appear to the stranger to be almost a mass of metal. The smallest of these receptacles is occupied entirely with the Religious Tract Society's plates, many of which are fairly entitled to the rest they are enjoying, having already given hundreds of thousands of impressions to the world. It is very pleasing to find in the heart of a busy, bustling establishment, such as we are reviewing, a chamber exclusively set apart for the propagation of religious knowledge; and it is a fact creditable to the country in general, as well as to the art of printing in particular, that, including all the publications printed by Messrs. Clowes, onefourth are self-devoted to religion. The larger store, which is 100 feet in length, is a dark omnium gatherum, containing the 6 Meditations' lie The Lives of Highway- ***** On the whole, however, the ponderous contents of the chamber are of great literary value; and it is with feelings of pride and satisfaction that the stranger beholds before him, in a single cellar, a capital, principally devoted to religious instruction, amounting to no less than 200,0007. ! In suddenly coming from the inky chambers of a printing-office into the paper-warehouse, the scene is, almost without metaphor, as different as black from white.' Its transition is like that which the traveller experiences in suddenly reaching the snowy region which caps lofty mountains of dark granite. It must be evident to the reader that the quantity of paper used by Messrs. Clowes in a single year must be enor mous. This paper, before it is despatched from the printer to the binder, undergoes two opposite processes, namely, wetting and drying, both of which may be very shortly described. The wetting-room, which forms a sort of cellar to the paper-warehouse, is a small chamber, containing three troughs, supplied with water, like twenty-four sheets-marked or signed A, those in a common laundry, by a leaden B, C, and so on, to Z-stands in twentypipe and cock. Leaning over one of these four piles, all touching each other, and of troughs, there stands, from morning till which the height of course depends upon night, with naked arms, red fingers, and the number of copies composing the in wooden shoes, a man, whose sole occu- edition. A gang of sharp little boys of pation, for the whole of his life, is to wet about twelve years of age, with naked paper for the press. The general allow- arms, termed gatherers, following each ance he gives to each quire is two dips, other as closely as soldiers in file, march which is all that he knows of the litera- past these heaps, from every one of which ture of the age; and certainly, when it is they each abstract, in regular order for considered that, with a strapping lad to as- publication, a single sheet, which they sist him, he can dip 200 reams a day, it is deliver as a complete work to a 'collator,' evident that it must require a considera- whose duty it is rapidly to glance over ble number of very ready writers to keep the printed signature letters of each sheet, pace with him. After being thus wetted, in order to satisfy himself that they folthe paper is put in a pile under a screw- low each other in regular succession; press, where it remains subjected to a and as soon as the signature letters have pressure of 200 tons for twelve hours. It either by one or by repeated gatherings should then wait about two days before it been all collected, they are, after being is used for printing, yet, if the weather pressed, placed in piles about eleven feet be not too hot, it will, for nearly a fort- high, composed of complete copies of the night, remain sufficiently damp to imbibe publication, which, having thus underthe ink from the type. gone the last process of the printing establishment, is ready for the hands of the binder. We have already stated that, as fast as the sheets printed on both sides are abstracted by the boys who sit at the bottoms of the nineteen steam-presses, they are piled in a heap by their sides. As soon as these piles reach a certain height, they are carried off, in wet bundles of about one thousand sheets, to the two drying-rooms, which are heated by steam to a temperature of about 90° of Fahrenheit. These bundles are there subdivided into 'lifts,' or quires, containing from fourteen to sixteen sheets; seven of these lifts, one after another, are rapidly placed upon the transverse end of a long-handled 'peel,' by which they are raised nearly to the ceiling, to be deposited across small wooden bars ready fixed to receive them, in which situation it is necessary they should remain at least twelve hours, in order that not only the paper, but the ink, should be dried. In looking upwards, therefore, the whole ceiling of the room appears as if an immense shower of snow had just suddenly been arrested in its descent from heaven. In the two rooms about four hundred reams can be dried in twenty-four hours. When the operation of drying is completed, the 'lifts' are rapidly pushed by the 'peel' one above another (like cards which have overlapped) into a pack, and in these masses they are then lowered; and again placed in piles, each of which contains the same signature,' or, in other words, is formed of duplicates of the same sheet. A work, therefore, containing The group of gathering-boys, whose march of intellect' we have just described, usually perform per day a thousand journeys, each of which is on an average, about fourteen yards. The quantity of paper in the two drying-rooms amounts to about 3000 reams, each weighing about 25lbs. The supply of white paper in store, kept in piles about 20 feet high, averages about 7000 reams; the amount of paper printed every week and delivered for publication amounts to about 1500 reams (of 500 sheets), each of which averages in size 3893 square inches. The supply, therefore, of white paper kept on hand, would, if laid down in a path of 224 inches broad, extend 1230 miles; the quantity printed on both sides per week would form a path of the same breadth of 263 miles in length. In the course of a year Messrs. Clowes consume, therefore, white paper enough to make petticoats of the usual dimensions (ten demys per petticoat) for three hundred and fifty thousand ladies! The ink used in the same space of time amounts to about 12,000lbs. The cost of the paper may be about 100,000l.; that of the ink exceeding 1500/. In one of the compartments of Messrs. Clowes' establishment, a few men are employed in fixing metal-type into the wooden-blocks of a most valuable and simple machine for impressing coloured maps, for which the inventor has lately taken ously inflicted. The north lid is no soonout a patent. er raised than the south one, upon which is embedded a metal plate coloured yellow, performs the same operation; which is immediately repeated by the eastern lid, the plates of which are coloured red; and, lastly, by the western lid, whose plates contain nothing but black lines, marks of cities, and names. The tedious process of drawing maps by hand has long been superseded by copper engravings; but besides the great expense attendant upon these impressions, there has also been added that of colouring, which it has hitherto been deemed impossible to perform but by the brush. The cost of maps, therefore, has not only operated to a considerable degree, as a prohibition of their use among the poor, but in general literature it has very materially checked many geographical elucidations, which, though highly desirable, would have been too expensive to be inserted. By this beautiful invention, the new artist has not only imparted to woodcut blocks the advantages of impressing, by little metallic circles, and by actual type, the positions, as well as the various names of cities, towns, rivers, &c., which it would be difficult as well as expensive to delineate in wood, but he has also, as we will endeavour to explain, succeeded in giving, by machinery, that bloom, or in other words, those colours to his maps, which had hitherto been laboriously painted on by human hands. On entering the small room of the house in which the inventor has placed his machine, the attention of the stranger is at once violently excited by seeing several printer's rollers, which, though hitherto deemed to be as black and as unchangeable as an Ethiopian's skin, appear before him bright yellow, bright red, and beautiful blue! Tempora mutantur,' they exultingly seem to say, nos et mutamur in illis! In the middle of the chamber stands the machine, consisting of a sort of open box, which, instead of having, as is usual, one lid only, has one fixed to every side, by which means the box can evidently be shut or covered by turning down either the lid on the north, on the south, on the east, or on the west. By these four operations, which are consecutively performed, quite as rapidly as we have detailed them, the sheet of white paper is seen successfully and happily transformed into a most lovely and prolific picture, in seven colours, of oceans, empires, kingdoms, principalities, cities, flowing rivers, mountains (the tops of which are left white), lakes, &c., each not only pronouncing its own name, but declaring the lines of latitude and longitude under which it exists. The picture, or, as it terms itself, 'The Patent Illuminated Map,' proclaims to the world its own title: it gratefully avows the name of its ingenious parent to be Charles Knight. A few details are yet wanting to fill up the rapid sketch or outline we have just given of the mode of imprinting these maps. On the northern block, which imparts the first impression, the oceans and lakes are cut in wavy lines, by which means, when the whole block is coloured blue, the wavy parts are impressed quite light, while principalities, kingdoms, &c., are deeply designated, and thus by one process two blues are imprinted. When the southern block, which is coloured yellow, descends, besides marking out the principalities, &c., which are to be permanently designated by that colour, a portion of it re-covers countries, which by the first process had been marked blue, but which, by the admixture of the yellow, are beautifully coloured green. By this second process, therefore, two colours are again imprinted. When the eastern lid, which is coloured red, turning upon The process of impressing with this its axis, impinges upon the paper, besides engine is thus effected. A large sheet of stamping the districts which are to be depure white drawing paper is, by the chief signated by its own colour, it intrudes upsuperintendent, placed at the bottom of on a portion of the blue impression, which the box, where it lies, the emblem of in- it instantly turns into purple, and upon a nocence, perfectly unconscious of the portion of the yellow impression, which it impending fate that awaits it. Before, instantly changes into brown; and thus by however, it has had any time for reflec- this single operation, three colours are tion, the north lid, upon which is embed-imprinted. ded a metal plate, coloured blue, suddenly But the three lids conjointly have perrevolves over upon the paper, when, by formed another very necessary operation the turn of a press underneath, the whole-namely, they have moistened the paper apparatus, a severe pressure is instantane- sufficiently to enable it to receive the ty.. not to pour a single bitter drop into a literary cup which we have purposely concocted only for Christmas use. pographical lines of longitude and lati- flections, because we have determined tude, the courses of rivers, the little round marks denoting cities, and the letterpress, all of which, by the last pressure, are imparted, in common black printer's ink, to a map, distinguishing, under the beautiful process we have described, the various regions of the globe, by light blue, dark blue, yellow, green, red, brown, and purple.* By Mr. Knight's patent machine maps may be thus furnished to our infant schools at the astonishing low rate of 44d each. To the Governor' of the building through which we have perambulated we cordially offer, in return for the courtesy with which he has displayed it, 'the compliments of the season;" and with equal gratitude let us acknowledge the important service rendered to the social family of mankind by the patient labour of each overseer, compositor, reader, pressman, and type-founder in his noble establishment. Let us give them the praise which is due to their art, and, to conclude, 'LET us give to the Devil his due!' ART. 11.-Journaux des Sièges faits ou soutenus par les Français dans la Péninsule de 1807 à 1814, rédigé d'après les ordres du Gouvernement, sur les Documents existant aux Archives de la Guerre et au Dépôt des Fortifications. Par J. Belmas, Chef de Bataillon du Génie. 4 vols. Paris, 1836. Before the wooden clocks in the compositors' halls strike EIGHT-at which hour the whole establishment of literary labourers quietly return to their homes, excepting those who, for extra work, extra pay, and to earn extra comforts for their families, are willing to continue their toilsome occupation throughout the whole night, resuming their regular work in the morning as cheerfully as if they had been at rest-we deem it our duty to observe that there are many other printing establishments in London which would strikingly exemplify the enormous physical power of the British press-especially that of the Times' Newspaper, which on the 28th of November, 1814, electrified its readers by unexpectedly in- THIS work, though neither so trustworthy forming them that the paper they held in or so interesting as the title-page promises, their hands had been printed by steam; is yet deserving of some notice. M. Beland it is impossible for the mind to con- mas's rédaction of the several operations, template also, for a single moment, the though less unfair than the works of the moral force of the British Press, without modern French school generally are, canreflecting, and without acknowledging not of course be of the same value that the that, under Providence, it is the only en- original documents from which he professgine that can save the glorious institutions es to have compiled his narrative would of the British empire from the impending have been. He has subjoined, however, to ruin that inevitably awaits them, unless his own narratives, copious appendixes of the merchants, the yeomanry, and the those original documents-some of which British people, aroused by the loud warn- are very curious;-but even their authoring of the said press, shall constitutional- ity is seriously impaired by the fact that ly disarm the hand of the destroyers: we they are only a selection of such parts of will, however, resolutely arrest ourselves the general correspondence as it suited in the utterance of these very natural re- his own views to produce. Admitting *We ought to observe that an analagous invention has already been brought to great perfection, by Mr. Hulmandell, in the department of lithogra. phy. By using consecutively six, ten, or a dozen stones, each charged with its separate colour, the effect of a fine water-colour drawing is reproduced while (the colour used being all oil-colour) a depth is them to be authentic and valuable as far as they go, it is obvious that they do not give the whole truth, and are rather to be considered as ex parte statements than as a complete body of historical evidence. The first volume is dedicated not to in most wonderful lightness and brilliancy, the sieges, but to a general summary of given to the shadows which the cleverest master of the Peninsular War-occupying two hunthe water-colour school cannot reach in his own dred and ninety pages, followed by nearoriginal performance. A set of views of French ly five hundred pages of piéces justificascenery and architecture, done in this way, may tives. The other volumes contain respecnow be seen in the shops: they are, in fact, beauti. ful pictures; and you get, we believe, twenty-six of tively narratives of the sieges of, II. Saragossa, Roses and Girona. them for eight guineas. IV. Tarifa, Saguntum, Valencia, Peniscola, Castro, Urdiales-all by the French;-Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, the forts of Salamanca, Burgos, St. Sebastian, Pampeluna, and Monzon, (a small town and château in Aragon) by the English : III. Astorga, Lerida, Mequinenza, Ciudad doubt more) willing to enrich history Rodrigo, Almeida, Tortosa, Tarrago- with a fuller and less select collection of na, Olivenza, Badajoz, and Campo such valuable documents. We are grateMayor. ful for every attempt to lift even a corner of that almost impenetrable curtain of falsehood lined with terror,' behind which Buonaparte prepared the various incidents of his wonderful drama; and in this view the present publication has many interesting points. All the Buonaparte papers, though applying to a single -each of these being followed by an ap- subject and a narrow period, mark strongpendix, more or less copious, of the origi- ly the character of their author-the nal correspondence. Of operations so affectation (if, indeed, like other imposvarious and extensive we cannot pretend tors, he had not grown to believe in himto give even a summary, much less any self) of omniscience and omnipotence details: we can only indicate to the mili- which prompted him to prescribe from tary student where the information is to Bayonne, St. Cloud, or even Vienna, the be found-but a few particulars which movements (some of them in minute demay interest the general reader we shall tail) of his armies in Portugal, Valencia, endeavour to condense into manageable or Andalusia the harsh presumption with which he criticised what any one limits. was all in all, and that without him La belle France, and all her skilful marshals. and her valiant armies, were—NOTHING. The most remarkable of these docu- else did, and the severe injustice with ments are assuredly certain Notes and which he visited on individual officers Instructions, dictated from time to time the natural impediments or inevitable. by Buonaparte himself relative to the accidents that happened to thwart his inmilitary operations in the Peninsula-a solent and often injudicious designs; and subject which never can be uninterest--with all this personal arrogance-the ing to a British reader, particularly when, patience or policy with which he boreas in the present instance, he can obtain if indeed he did not (as we rather believe) a glimpse of the real motives and move- foment-the squabbles, jealousies, and inments of the French, divested of the deed almost continual insubordination, falsehood and fanfaronnade of their pub- of his generals amongst themselves. lished despatches. M. Belmas does not Provided they obeyed him, he seems to state where he found these documents, have been totally indifferent how they nor to whom they were addressed, nor behaved to one another. His very interon what authority they are given. It ests were often sacrificed to his vanity; might be concluded from his title-page and even the reverses of his lieutenants that he found the Notes, as well as Buona- had to his mind the consolation of showparte's direct correspondence with sev-ing the world that Napoleon the Great eral of the generals, in the official archives at Parts. But such is not the fact. M. Belmas did not like to own whence they came; we can supply the omission : they were addressed to King Joseph and his staff at Madrid, as the materials on which these puppets were to frame their orders to the several armies, and were taken with the rest of Joseph's effects after the battle of Vittoria; they The first of the Notes is of 13th July, were published (and more than M. Belmas has republished) in the Appendix to 1808, without date of place, but it must the first volume of Colonel Napier's His- have been from Bayonne, and is addresstory, and noticed in the Quarterly Re-ed to Savary, chief of Joseph's staff at view, vol. 56, but some further com- Madrid. It takes a general, but, as affairs munications between Joseph and Napo- turned out, not a very correct view of leon, and a considerable portion (not all) of a correspondence with the Generals commanding the French armies in Spain, are new to us, and we heartily wish that M. Belmas had been able, or (what we As the most important of these documents have been already applied to their historical uses, it is chiefly as illustrative of Buonaparte's personal character and his mode of dealing with his Generals and Marshals, that we shall now examine them the operations in Spain. The chief soli- On a |