An illustration of the perfection to which the art of printing has been brought, was given in the printing of the catalogues of the great Exhibition of 1851. The Exhibition opened on the first of May; yet with all the speed that could be made, it was not till midnight of the 30th that the catalogue, a closely printed volume, was ready to go to press. By the next morning, however, a bound copy was presented to Queen Victoria. Twelve trades were necessary for the production of this catalogue. And so large an edition was issued that thirty-seven tons of new type were employed, of which amount twelve tons were manufactured in the short space of six weeks! Twenty-seven thousand reams of paper were used, while the ink required for the small catalogue alone amounted to 4,000 pounds. Specimens of typography were also exhibited from the imperial printing-house of Vienna at this Exhibition. About 500,000 sheets, or 1,000 reams, of paper per day are required for the consumption of that establishment. A French paper makes a calculation to show how marvelously human labor is outrivaled by the mechanical arrangements of the steam press. The paper, “La Patrie,” contains about 4,230 lines: 8,000 copies make 34,560,000 lines. A clerk could write about three lines in a minute; therefore it would require 11,520,000 minutes, or 192,000 hours, for a single clerk to supply 8,000 copies of “La Patrie;” in other words, it would require 192,000 men to supply, by copying, the same amount of paper which the cylinder printing-press supplies in one hour. What great armies of compositors are at work in the printing-houses of Christendom! What numberless presses by night and by day throw off multitudinous papers, pamphlets, and books, which are scattered to every home, business mart, and travelling conveyance in the land. At the Great Exhibition one Bible Society alone had specimens of the Word of God printed in one hundred and twenty different languages. And a single religious publishing society of London, as early as 1862, had issued five hundred and seventy-six millions of copies of its publications. But that is only one of many societies of similar character, and moreover, every enlightened nation abounds in book and periodical publishers and booksellers. [Illustration] [Illustration] XXV. Time of the Great Invention.--A First Gift.--The Use of the Alphabet.--A New Era.--Royal Printers.--Knights of Type and Pen.--A Mighty Engine.--Gutenberg’s Dream.--The Press mighty.