Pickering died in 1854, and though Charles Whittingham the younger lived to the age of eighty-one, his death not taking place till 1876, he had retired from business in 1860. The business was afterwards acquired by Mr. George Bell. In the English provinces Messrs. Clay, of Bungay, in Suffolk, have made for themselves a reputation both as general printers and more particularly for the careful production of old English texts; and Messrs. Austin, of Hertford, are well known for their Oriental work. But the pre-eminence certainly rests with the Clarendon Press at Oxford, whose work, whether in its innumerable editions of the Bible and Prayer-book, its classical books, or its great dictionaries, is probably, alike in accuracy of composition, in excellence of spacing and press-work, and in clearness of type, the most flawless that has ever been produced. Book-lovers have been known to complain of it as so good as to be uninteresting, but it certainly possesses all the distinctive virtues of a University Press. If England has no lack of good printers at the present day, in Scotland they are, at least, equally plentiful. The Ballantyne Press was founded by James Ballantyne, a solicitor in Kelso, with the aid of Sir Walter Scott. Ballantyne and Scott had been school-fellows and chums, and an incident in their school life recorded by Ballantyne aptly illustrates the characters of the two men. Ballantyne was studious but not quick, and often when he was bothered with his lessons, Scott would whisper to him, 'Come, slink over beside me, Jamie, and I'll tell you a story.' Although their roads lay apart for some years, while Scott was studying in Edinburgh and Ballantyne was carrying on the Kelso _Mail_, they met and renewed their friendship in the stage coach that ran between Kelso and Glasgow. Shortly afterwards, Ballantyne called on Scott, and begged him to supply a few paragraphs on legal questions of the day to the Kelso _Mail_. This Scott readily undertook to do, and when the manuscript was ready he took it himself to the printing-office, and with it some of the ballads destined for Lewis's collection then publishing in Edinburgh. Before he left he suggested that Ballantyne should print a few copies of the ballads, so that he might show his friends in Edinburgh what Ballantyne could do. Twelve copies were accordingly printed, with the title of _Apologies for Tales of Terror_. These were published in 1799, and Scott was so pleased with their appearance that he promised Ballantyne that he should be the printer of a selection of Border ballads that he was then making. This selection was given the title of _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, and formed two small octavo volumes, with the imprint, 'Kelso, 1802.'