In one return, specifying the rates of duty and amount of duty received upon each denomination of paper since 1770, it appears that the total amount of duty on paper manufactured in England for the year 1784, to which I have just alluded as being estimated in value at £800,000., was £46,867. 19s. 9¼d., the duty at that time being divided into seven distinct classes or rates of collection; while twenty years after, when the mode of assessing the duty was reduced to but three classes, it had risen to £315,802. 4s. 8d.; in 1830, fifteen years after, to £619,824. 7s. 11d.; in 1835, for the United Kingdom, to £833,822. 12s. 4d., or, in weight, to 70,655,287 lbs., which was, again, within so short a period as fifteen years, very nearly doubled. The quantity of paper charged with Excise duty in the United Kingdom, being, in 1850, no less than 141,032,474 lbs., and last year (1854) the enormous weight of 179,896,222 lbs. Those observations, which are partly technical, because, without technicality, the view would be incomplete,—may give some idea of the skill required in the workman, and the expenditure demanded of the capitalist, to produce so simple a thing, as a sheet of paper. The most exact care, the most ingenious invention, the nicest work of hand, and the most complicated machinery, are essential to that superiority which the British manufacture of paper has at length established. But the capabilities of paper are still more extensive. There are probably few branches of use, taste, or ornament, to which it may not be applicable. We have it already moulded into many forms of utility, and even of elegance, under the well-known name of _papier mache_—a material which may yet be formed into works of art, painted and enamelled tables, antique candelabra, models of busts, statuettes, classic temples, and everything which can be shaped in a mould. An earlier and more important use of Paper is in the decoration of dwellings. Formerly, the apartments of persons of opulence were hung with tapestry, generally brought from the Continental loom. But its cost, its loss of colour by time; and the rise of commercial and industrial opulence, displaced this elaborate and heavy decoration, and substituted “_paper hangings_.” The first specimens of those exhibited nothing but the rudeness of an art in its infancy, and were almost wholly foreign; but the capability of the invention was large, and it had the advantage of converting the humble covering of walls into copies of the pencil, on a new and extended scale. The Continental specimens of this manufacture already display representations of leading national events, memorable battles, and even portraits of eminent men, forming, for even the humbler ranks, a kind of historic galleries.