THE ART OF PRINTING.

Southland Times, Issue 587, 5 November 1866, Page 3

THE ART OF PRINTING.

BT BATAED TATLOE — A PEIJfTEE. Perhaps there is no department of enterprise whose details are less understood by intelligent people than the " art preservative " — the achievements of types. Every day, their life long, they are accnstomed to read the newspaper, to find fault with its statements, its arrangement, its looks ; to plume themselves upon the discovery of some roguish and acrobatic type that gets into a frolic, and stands upon its head ; or of some waste letter or two in it ; but of the process by which the newspaper is made, of the myriads of motions, and thousands of pieces necessary to its composition, they know little and think less. They imagine they discourse of wonder, indeed, when they speak of the fair white carpet, woven for thought to walk on — of the rags that fluttered upon the back of the beggar yesterday. But there is something more wonderful still. When we look at the hundred and fifty-two little boxes, somewhat shaded with thfi touch of the fingers, that c >mp3se the ] ri .tjrs' " cas3 " — noiseless, except the clicking of the types, as one by one they take their places in the growing line — we think we have found the marvel of the art. "We think how many fancies in fragments there are in the boxes, how many atoms of poetry and excellence the printer cau make here and there, if he only had a little chart to work — how many facts in a small '** handful " — how much truth in chaos. Now he picks up the scattered elements, until he holds in his hand a stanza of " Gray's Elegy," or a monody upon Grimes " all buttoned up before," and now " Paradise Lost ;" he arrays a bride in " small caps," and a sonnet in " nonpareil ;" he announces that the languishing " live," in one sentence — transposes the words, and deplores the days that are few and " evil," in the next. A poor jest tricks its way slowly into tbe printer's hand like a clock just running down, and a strain of eloquence marches into line letter by letter. We fancy we can tell the difference by hearing of the ear, but perhaps not. The types that told a wedding yesterday announce a burial to-morrow — perhaps the self-same letters. They are the elements to make a world of — these types are a world with something in it as beautiful as spring, as rich as summer, and as grand as autumn flowers that frost cannot wilt — fruit that shall ripen for all time. The newspaper has become the log-book of the age ; it tells at what rate the world is running : we cannot find our reckoning without it. True, the grocer may bundle up a pound of candles in our last expressed thoughts, but it is only coming to base uses, and that is done times innumerable. We console ourselves by thinking that one can make of that newspaper what he cannot make of living oaks — a bridge for time ; that he can fling it over the chasm of the dead years, and walk safely back upon the shadowy sea into the fair Past. The singer shall not end his song, nor the true soul be eloquent no more. The realm of the press is enchanted ground. Sometimes the editor has the happiness of knowing that he has defended the right, exposed the wrong, protected fche weak ; that he had given utterance to a sentiment that had cheered somebody's solitary hour, made somebody happier, kindled a smile upon a sad face, or hope in a heavy heart. He may meet with that sentiment many years after" it may. have lost all charm of its paternity, but he feels affection for it. He welcomes it as a long absent child. He reads it as if for the first time, and wonders if, indeed, he wrote it, for he has changed since then. Perhaps he could not give utterance to the sentiment now — perhaps he would not if he could. It seems like the voice of his former self calling to its parents, and there is a something mournful in its tone. He begins to think— he remembers why he w r rote it, where were his readers then, and whither they have gone — what he was then, and how much he has changed. I Sofch© muses, until he fiads himself won-

dering if that thought of his will continue to float after he ie dead, and whether he is really looking on something that will survive him. And then comes the sweet consciousness that there is nothing in the sentence that he could wish unwritten — that it is a better part of him — a shred from the garment of immortality he Bhali leave behind hira when he joinß the " iuumerable caraven," and takes his place in the silent halls of death. — Philadelphia Printers' Circular.