In a long gallery that looks like a chamber of the Inquisition with self-acting racks, stands a row of plate-printing presses worked by steam. Every time a sheet passes through them they emit a soft “click” like a ship’s capstan creaking in a whisper. By this sound they announce to all whom it may concern that they have printed two Bank Notes. They are tell-tales, and keep no secrets; for, not content with stating the fact aloud, each press moves, by means of a chain, an index of numerals at the end of the room; so that the chief of the department can see at any hour of the day how many each press has printed. To take an impression of a note plate “on the sly,” is therefore impossible. By a clever invention of Mr. Oldham the impression returns to the printer when made, instead of remaining on the opposite side of the press, after it has passed through the rollers, as of old. The plates are heated, for inking, over steam boxes instead of charcoal fires. When a ream, consisting of five hundred sheets or one thousand notes, have been printed, they are placed in a tray which is inserted in a sort of shelf-trap that shuts up with a spring. No after-abstraction can, therefore, take place. One such repository is over the index appertaining to each press, and at the end of the day it can at once be seen whether the number of sheets corresponds with the numerals of the tell-tale. Any sort of mistake can thus be readily detected. The average number of “promises to pay” printed per diem is thirty thousand. As we cannot allow the dot over an _i_, or the cross of a _t_ to escape the focus of our critical microscope, we now proceed to apply it to the Bank Ink. Like the liquid of Messrs. Day and Martin, this inestimable composition, with half the usual labour, produces the most brilliant jet-black, fully equal to the highest Japan varnish, and is warranted to keep in any climate. It is made from the charred husks of Rhenish grapes after their juice has been expressed and bottled for exportation to the dinner-tables of half the world. When mixed with pure linseed oil, carefully prepared by boiling and burning, the vinous refuse produces a species of blacks so tenacious that they obstinately refuse to be emancipated from the paper when once enslaved to it by the press. It is so intensely nigritious that, compared with it, all other blacks are musty browns; and pale beside it. If the word of a printer’s devil may be taken, it is many degrees darker than the streams of Erebus. Can deeper praise be awarded?