If, in an age of foreign convulsion, England has undergone no catastrophe; if, in the fall of monarchies, she has preserved her hereditary throne; if, in the mingled infidelity and superstition of the Continent, which, like the mingled frenzy and fetters of a lunatic hospital, have, in our day, exhibited the lowest humiliation of human nature; she has preserved her freedom and her religion; I attribute all, under God, to the vigour, and intelligence of public investigation; the incessant urgency of appeal to the public mind; the living organization, of which the heart is the PRESS of England! PAPER AND PAPER MAKING, ANCIENT AND MODERN. CHAPTER I. Introduction—Language—Origin of the Art of Writing—Various modes of recording events which preceded it—Materials upon which Men first Wrote—Stones, Bricks, Metals, Skins and Intestines of Animals, Tablets, Leaves, Bark, etc., etc.—The Egyptian Papyrus, from which Paper (so called) was first made—Process of Manufacture—Usual dimensions and extreme durability of Papyri—Modern Paper—Its general advantages to mankind—Supposed period of its Invention—The Introduction of Paper-making into Europe—Historical incidents connected therewith—James Whatman—The superiority of his manufacture—Adoption of the Fourdrinier-Machine—General advantages of Machinery over the Original Process, etc., etc. Amongst the numerous and diversified objects of human investigation and research, it would, perhaps, be difficult to single out one, more curious and interesting, than that of the medium which bears the symbols of language; which retains the register of circumstances and events of past ages, and which hands down to us the transactions of primeval time, with its intervening periods. Undoubtedly the noblest acquisition of mankind, perhaps the greatest advantage which we possess, is that of the faculty of speech. Without speech, man, in the midst of crowds, would be solitary. The endearments of friendship, and the communications of wisdom, alike would become unavailing; man, in fact, without speech, could hardly be accounted a rational being. That the use of speech or language was given to Adam immediately upon his formation, we have no reason to doubt; for from the testimony of Moses it appears, that he not only gave names to every living creature, “to every beast of the field, and to every fowl of the air,” as they were brought to him, but that also as soon as Eve was made he could say—“This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh,” the first sentence which is recorded of his uttering, and which is sufficient to show, that even then, he possessed a competent stock of words to declare the ideas or conceptions of his mind.