In order to accomplish the arduous object which those gentlemen then had in view, they appear to have laboured without intermission for nearly six years, when, after incurring an expense which would have exhausted any fortune of moderate extent (upwards of £60,000), they at length succeeded in giving some sort of organization and connection to the mechanical parts, for which they obtained a patent, and finding eventually that there was little prospect of being recompensed for labour and risk, or even reimbursed their expenses, unless Parliament should think proper to grant an extension of their patent, they determined upon making a fresh application to the Legislature for that purpose. But, it would appear that although in the Bill as it passed the House of Commons, such prolonged period extended to fourteen years; in the Lords it was limited to seven, with an understanding that such term should be extended to seven years more in the event of the patentees proving, upon a future application, that they had not been sufficiently remunerated. No such application, however, was made, in consequence of a Standing Order of the House of Lords, placed on their journal subsequently to the passing of the said act; which regulation had the effect of depriving the Messrs. Fourdrinier of any benefit whatever from the invention; and ultimately, so great were the difficulties they had to encounter, and so little encouragement or support did they receive, that the time and attention required to mature this valuable invention, and the large capital which it absorbed, were the means of reducing that wealthy and liberal firm to the humiliating condition of bankruptcy; and only within the past few months the surviving partner, Mr. Henry Fourdrinier, to whom mainly we owe the success of the invention, and as unquestionably our present high position in the scale of nations, was carried to his grave, in his ninetieth year, comparatively a beggar. A leading article in the _Times_, June 17, 1847, speaking of Mr. Henry Fourdrinier, thus concludes by advocating his claims:—“Three days only are past since an assembly, illustrious for rank and station, met to celebrate and immortalize the memory of Caxton. What more fitting or graceful opportunity of paying a tribute of respect and justice to his fellow-labourer in an adjoining field? the one the father of printing, the other the inventor of a process by which the full benefits of printing have been realized to the civilized world. And in the case of Mr. Fourdrinier this advantage is found, that he can receive in person the tribute of a nation’s gratitude; an octogenarian, he still lives; unlike Caxton, he is not yet a subject for posthumous honours. It is not a monument he wants, but justice. The world, no doubt, according to ancient precedent, would rather pay its tribute of admiration, if we should not rather say its debt of homage, after death. But it is fortunately in the