Lithography is the most scientific and the most flexible of all methods of printing. It can imitate fairly, and it often reproduces with accuracy, a line engraving on steel, a drawing in crayon, the manuscript of a penman, or the painting in oil of an artist. By the aid of photography, it can repeat, in an enlarged or diminished size, any kind of printed work. It has many advantages over copper-plate and xylography. For some kinds of work, like autograph letters and rude diagrams, engraving is unnecessary; the design may be written with oily ink on paper, and can then be transferred direct from the written copy to a stone without the aid of a graver. The transferring process is another peculiarity of this art which allows the lithographer to duplicate small designs with greater facility and economy than a similar duplication could be effected by the stereotyper of types. These advantages are counterbalanced by one great defect: lithography is not a quick method of printing. The usual performance of the lithographic hand press when applied to ordinary work, is about four hundred impressions per day; on the steam press, the performance is about five thousand impressions per day. The arts of lithography and copper-plate are useful and beautiful methods of printing, but they do not make books and newspapers.[1] The necessity which compels them to [p023] make a new engraving for every new subject restricts them almost exclusively to the field of art and ornament. If no other method of printing were known, encyclopedias and newspapers would be impossibilities. “The art preservative of all arts” is not the art of lithography nor of copper-plate. This distinction rightfully belongs to Typography only. The theory upon which this method is based is that of the independence of each character, and of the mutual dependence of all its characters. Every character is a separate and movable type, so made that it can be arranged with others in an endless variety of combinations. The types used for this page are used for other pages in this book; they can be re-arranged for use in the printing of many other books or pamphlets; they cease to serve only when they are worn out. All other methods of printing require, at the outset, the engraving on one piece of wood or metal of all the letters or parts of a design, which, when once combined, cannot be separated; they can be applied only to the object for which they were first made. Typography is most successful when it is applied to the letters of the alphabet. It fails totally when applied to maps, or to any kind of printed work requiring irregularly varying lines. It is only partially successful in the representation of combined ornaments and the characters of music. Its true field is in the representation of words and thoughts, and here it is supreme. There is no other method of printing which can do this work so perfectly.