But this, after all, was a very small result. When books could be produced so slowly, there could be no popular literature. Books were still articles for the few, instead of for the many. Steam power, however, completely altered the state of affairs. When Koenig invented his steam press, he showed by the printing of Clarkson's 'Life of Penn'--the first sheets ever printed with a cylindrical press--that books might be printed neatly, as well as cheaply, by the new machine. Mr. Bensley continued the process, after Koenig left England; and in 1824, according to Johnson in his 'Typographia,' his son was "driving an extensive business." In the following year, 1825, Archibald Constable, of Edinburgh, propounded his plan for revolutionising the art of bookselling. Instead of books being articles of luxury, he proposed to bring them into general consumption. He would sell them, not by thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, "ay, by millions;" and he would accomplish this by the new methods of multiplication--by machine printing and by steam power. Mr. Constable accordingly issued a library of excellent books; and, although he was ruined--not by this enterprise, but the other speculations into which he entered--he set the example which other enterprising minds were ready to follow. Amongst these was Charles Knight, who set the steam presses of William Clowes to work, for the purposes of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. William Clowes was the founder of the vast printing establishment from which these sheets are issued; and his career furnishes another striking illustration of the force of industry and character. He was born on the 1st of January, 1779. His father was educated at Oxford, and kept a large school at Chichester; but dying when William was but an infant, he left his widow, with straitened means, to bring up her family. At a proper age William was bound apprentice to a printer at Chichester; and, after serving him for seven years, he came up to London, at the beginning of 1802, to seek employment as a journeyman. He succeeded in finding work at a small office on Tower Hill, at a small wage. The first lodgings he took cost him 5s. a week; but finding this beyond his means he hired a room in a garret at 2s. 6d., which was as much as he could afford out of his scanty earnings.