'Most of the type faces noticed were on English bodies, and the composition is somewhat similar. Arabic is composed just as with English. Sanskrit possesses some little features of accents and kerned sections, which render justification quite a fine art, accents on varying bodies needing to be utilised.... The firm does much Hindustani work, and possesses seven sizes of type in this language. Amongst the curiosities are the cuneiform types, the wedge-like series of faces in which old Persian, Median, and Assyrian inscriptions are written; and last, but by no means least in interest, the odd-looking hieroglyphic type faces, which are on bodies ranging from half nonpareil to three nonpareils, and some idea of their extent may be derived by noting that this type occupies fourteen cases of one hundred boxes each.' To the firm of Messrs. Clowes of Stamford Street belongs the credit of being the first to print cheap periodical literature. William Clowes the elder, a native of Chichester, born in 1779, was apprenticed to a printer of that town, and coming to London in 1802 commenced business on his own account in the following year 1803. By marriage with the daughter of Mr. Winchester of the Strand, he obtained a share of the Government printing work. On moving to Stamford Street, Blackfriars Road, he was chosen to print the _Penny Magazine_, edited by Charles Knight, the first attempt to provide the public with good literature in a cheap periodical form. The work was illustrated with woodcuts, and so great was its success that from No. 1 to No. 106 there were sold twenty million copies; but the undertaking was heavily handicapped by the paper tax of threepence per pound (see _The Struggles of a Book_, C. Knight, 1850, 8vo). In 1840 an article appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, written, it is said, by Sir F. B. Head, but which is more in the style of T. F. Dibdin, on the Clowes printing-office. Even at that time there were no less than nineteen of Applegarth and Cowper's machines at work there, with a daily average of one thousand per hour each. Besides these there were twenty-three hand presses and five hydraulic presses. The foundry employed thirty hands, and the compositors numbered one hundred and sixty.