Brilliant. Expert penmen, it is said, have succeeded in writing the Lord’s Prayer upon the edge of a sheet of paper. A type-setter in Berlin, most surprisingly, has formed a type so minute as to be scarcely readable without a good magnifying glass. The type of this paragraph, though not so small as the microscopic letters produced in Prussia, is yet so diminutive that even Diamond is large by comparison. Of the letter i nearly 4600 go to a pound. GRADATION OF TYPES. The following specimen shows the proportion which one size of type bears to another in _width_; but it is necessary to observe that it must be taken with certain limitations, because each founder has letter of every size that will either drive out or get in with others of the same body, some faces being more extended and others being more condensed than the standard width of type. The scale contains thirteen sizes in order of gradation, viz., Great Primer, English, Pica, Small Pica, Long Primer, Bourgeois, Brevier, Minion, Nonpareil, Agate, Pearl, Diamond, and Brilliant. [Illustration] POINT SYSTEM OF TYPE-BODIES. In 1882, MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan began to make type on the proportional system of bodies. The Pica em, being the eighty-third part of thirty five centimetres, was divided into twelve parts, or points. This system of exact proportional type-bodies was approved of and adopted by the American type-founders generally. It has been favourably received by printers in this country, and all printing offices will in due time be fully equipped with types of this description. The standard for the height of type was fixed at 2⅓ centimetres. In some European countries printing offices had their types cast to a height to suit the proprietor’s whim. Some of the foreign founders have sent young men to Philadelphia to be educated in the American system of heights and bodies, and at least two foundries in Germany have adopted the American plan. The following table shows the systematic gradation of bodies and position of nicks in the point system, one point being equivalent to 1/12 of a Pica em. [Illustration: 3 POINT. Excelsior. 3½ POINT. Brilliant. 4 POINT. Semi-Brevier. 4½ POINT. Diamond. 5 POINT. Pearl. 5½ POINT. Agate. 6 POINT. Nonpareil. 7 POINT. Minion. 8 POINT. Brevier. 9 POINT. Bourgeois. 10 POINT. Long Primer. 11 POINT. Small Pica. 12 POINT. Pica. 14 POINT. English. 16 POINT. Two-line Brevier. 18 POINT. Three-line Nonpareil. 20 POINT. Two-line Long Primer. 22 POINT. Two-line Small Pica. 24 POINT. Two-line Pica. 28 POINT. Two-line English. 30 POINT. Five-line Nonpareil. 32 POINT. Four-line Brevier. 36 POINT. Three-line Pica.] A BILL OF PICA. The following is reckoned by the founders a regular fount, complete in all its sorts:— A BILL OF 800 LBS. OF PICA.