Machinery now does nearly every sort of labor,--economizing health, strength, time, and money, in all that it does. We tread upon beautifully figured carpets that are woven by machinery from single threads. We wear clothes that are made by machinery at the rate of two thousand stitches a minute. We hear in every direction the whistle of the locomotive, which saves us almost incalculable time, in the safe and convenient transportation of our persons and our property. We read in our newspapers messages that are brought instantaneously, from points far as well as near, by a simple electric current, governed by machinery, which prints its thought in plain Roman characters, at a rate of speed defying the emulation of the most expert penman. These, among many illustrations of scientific progress, occur in our daily experience. Manufacture, agriculture, and commerce would yield us others quite as impressive. In all this we see that man is finding out and applying the economy of Nature, and thus that the world is advancing, by well-directed effort, toward a more natural, and therefore a happier civilization. The labor-saving processes of mechanism as applied to Printing are in the highest degree advantageous and admirable. Once types were cast in moulds, such as boys use for casting bullets. Now they are turned out, with inconceivable rapidity, from a casting-machine worked by steam. Ink and paper, too, are made by machinery; and when the types are set, we invoke the aid of the Steam-Press, and so print off at least fifty impressions to each one produced under the old process of press-work by hand. Machinery, moreover, folds the printed sheets,--trims the rough edges of books,--directs the newspaper,--and does, in short, the bulk of the drudgery that used to be done by operatives, at great expense of time and trouble, and with anything but commensurate profit. These are facts of familiar knowledge. They indicate remarkable scientific progress. But the great fact--by no means so well known--remains to be stated. It is only of late that machinery has been successfully employed in the most laborious and expensive process connected with the art of printing,--that, namely, of Composition. In this process, however, iron fingers have proved so much better than fingers of flesh, that it is perfectly safe to predict the speedy discontinuance, by all sensible printers, of composition by hand.