Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 11412-h.htm or 11412-h.zip: (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/4/1/11412/11412-h/11412-h.htm) or (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/4/1/11412/11412-h.zip) THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION. VOL. 10, NO. 286.] SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1827. [PRICE 2d. * * * * * [Illustration: Caxton's House in the Almonry, Westminster.] To expatiate on the advantages of printing, at this time of day, would be "wasteful and ridiculous excess." We content ourselves with the comparison of Dryden's "Long trails of light descending down." In a retrospective glance at our previous volumes (for can the phrenologists tell us of a head capacious enough to contain their exhaustless variety?) our readers will perceive that, from time to time, sundry "accounts" of the origin and progress of printing have been inserted in the MIRROR;[1] and though we are not vain enough to consider our sheet as the "refined gold, the lily, the violet, the ice, or the rainbow," of the poet's perfection, yet in specimens of the general _economy of the art_, the long-extended patronage of the public gives us an early place. With an outline of the life of CAXTON our readers must be already familiar; but we wish them to consider the above accurate representation of the FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER'S RESIDENCE as antecedent to a _Memoir of Caxton_, in which it will be our aim to concentrate, in addition to biographical details, many important facts from the testimony of antiquarians; for scarcely a volume of the _Archaeologia_ has appeared without some valuable communication on Caxton and his times.