We have chosen to give Mr. Astle’s paragraphs on this subject, entire, “pure and simple,” (with no corrections or alterations, except as to a few particulars in spelling, punctuation, &c.,) including some unnecessary formal verbiage,—instead of embodying his facts and observations in our own language. We shall do likewise with other authors whose books we use in this work, as the most effectual way of giving each of them due credit for their several discoveries and statements, and, at the same time, securing our own just claims to what we herein present as of our own discovery or production. But we will give no credit to a mere compiler or plagiarist. Mr. Astle was keeper of the ancient Records of the English Government in the Tower of London, and thus enjoyed extraordinary facilities for ascertaining such facts, and making such observations as he furnishes in his very useful, interesting, and elegantly illustrated book. As to what he says (in his seventh paragraph) about the inexpediency of “hazarding” any effort to revive writing which has faded or become illegible, from fear of “a suspicion of deceit,”—the caution must of course be limited to cases where the words proposed to be restored to legibility have reference to some question of disputed title, or other matter in litigation or controversy. Mr. Astle would not have hesitated (any more than Angelo Mai) to use any possible process for the restoration of a _palimpsest_ manuscript of a long-lost work of Cicero or Livy, or of any document worth the labor and the time requisite to revive the letters or read them. Mr. Astle’s slight lapse of pen or mind in stating (eighth paragraph) that “Blue or yellow ink was seldom used except in _manuscripts_,” reminds us of Noah Webster’s reason, given in the first edition of his quarto dictionary, for the use of the word “Iland” instead of “Island,” viz., that the latter spelling was “found only in books.” Perhaps the venerable Mr. Astle would have been as much astonished to learn that he himself had always written manuscript, whenever he put pen to paper, as the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, in Moliere’s comedy, was to learn that he “had been speaking prose all his life.” A comparatively recent author gives the following as the sum and substance of his knowledge on this division of the subject of our book. WRITING-INKS.