The Kit-cat Club.

Evening Post, Issue 109, 15 June 1865, Page 3

The Kit-cat Club.

—The Kit-cat club was instituted in 1700, and died away about the year 1720. There were originally thirty-nine members, and they increased gradually to the forty-eight whose portraits Kneiler painted for their secretary, Jacob Tonson Dryden's bODkseller. Their earliest rendezvous was at the house of a pastrycook, one Christopher Cat in Shire-lane, near Temple bar. When he grew wealthier, the club removed with him to the Fountain tavern in the Strand. Tue club derived its name from the celebrated mutton-pie, which had been christened after its maker. The first members were those whig patriots who brought about the revolution, and drove out King James. Their obj ect was the encouragement of literature and the finoarts, and the diffusion of loyalty to the house of Hanover. They elected their « toast " for the year by ballot. The lady's name, when chosen , was written on the club drinWug-glasses with a diamond. Among the more celebrated of the members of this club were Kneller, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, Steele, Lord Mohun, the Earl of Wharton, Sir Robert Walpole, the Earl of Burlington, the Earl -of Bath, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, the proud Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Newcastle.— Thr-rnbury's Haunted London. New Piunting Machine.— The London correspondent of Macniven and Cameron's Paper Trade Review, says :— " There is an English Engineer of the name of Wilkinson, who has invented a machine for the printing of newspapers which completely surpasses Hoe's machine in respect of speed. lam unable to go into a detailed description of this machine, but one feature of it that demands note is that the paper from which it prints is in the web on the reel and after passing under the types, it is cut in sheets. The extraordinary velocity of the machine is almost incredible, 23,000 copies of the inside sheet of the Times being printed on both sides at once per hour. This machine does without feeders, and the reel of papers that it feeds from is unrolled by its own action. I should think the paper cannot be damped either, or if it is damped, its must be damped by some strange process not now used. The price of the machine is considerably under the price of Hoe's machines,"