dy's poetry which always associates it in our minds with the sweet breathings of summer. It is soft and musical as their gentlest echoes; and not unlike them, because its sweetness and tenderness are sometimes touched with mournfulness. Her images are drawn from all that is fairest and brightest in nature or humanity; and the characters that people her fairy scenes are of the pure and noblehearted race, alike beautiful in their death and in their love. The spirit that inspires every line, has its impulse from the thoughts of a gentle heart, elevated almost into grandeur by its admiration of a sublime moral purity and greatness; and, read which of her compositions we may, the same delight is manifested in the devolopment of this feeling. Another striking characteristic of Mrs. Hemans' poetry, is the tone it acquires from the devout love of solitude which uniformly seems to possess its author and inspire her happiest strains. The leafy, deep green shade; the vallies and solitary hills, where the echo and ever-springing fountains have their birth; the isles of the sea, the lone bowery islands of the sea; the river's bank, or the deserted temple-from haunts like these she has drawn, not merely the illustrations of her verse, but the very spirit of song itself, that seems to have held communion with her in these romantic solitudes. With so many of the characteristics of genuine poetry, there is no doubt the composition of this amiable authoress would have attracted general admiration, had they possessed no higher quality. But it is not either on their mere beauty or pathos they depend, but on their impressive morality. Several other writers may have given occasionally as exquisite delineations of female love, as noble and inspiring pictures of high, self-devoting bravery; but none but the greatest geniuses have ever equalled her, in blending the tenderness of female love with the dignity of all female graces, or the bravery of man with so many of the virtues of patriotism. In the volume now before us, the highest excellences of Mrs. Hemans' poetry are displayed in their strongest light. The Records of her own sex, of those who have perished in the devotedness of their souls to their faith and love, furnished her, without fiction, with themes in every way suited to her pen. She has selected those the best adapted to show woman in her loveliest character; and never were the charms of the most exquisite verse strengthened by sentiments more beautiful, or fitter for a pure and an exalted soul. Our first extract shall be the little piece entitled The American Forest Girl. Wildly and mournfully the Indian drum On the deep hush of moonlight forest broke;'Sing us a death song, for thine hour is come," --- So the red warriors to their captive spoke. Still, and amidst those dusky forms alone, A youth, a fair-hair'd youth of England stood, Like a king's son; tho' from his cheek had flown And his press'd lips look'd marble.-Fiercely bright, And high around him, blaz'd the fires of night, Of what within his secret heart befell, Known but to heaven that hour?-Perchance Shedding no hope.-He knew, he felt his They quench'd the brand beneath the cypress doom On the dark hunters in their vengeful mood?A girl-a young slight girl-a fawn-like child Of green Savannas and the leafy wild, Springing unmark'd till then, as some lone flower, Happy because the sunshine is its dower; Yet one that knew how early tears are shed,- When will ye think of me, kind friends? For hers had mourn'd a playmate brother dead. When will ye think of me ?-When the rose of the rich midsummer time Is fill'd with the hues of its glorious prime; When ye gather its bloom, as in bright hours fled, From the walks where my footsteps no more may tread; Then let it be ! RECENT IMPROVEMENTS IN PRINTING, BY MR. COWPER. IT is a remarkable fact, that from the invention of the art of printing, to the year 1798, a period of nearly three hundred and fifty years, no improvement had been introduced in this important art. In Dr. Dib din's interesting account of printing, in the Bibliographical Decameron, may be seen representations of the early printing presses, which exactly resemble the wooden presses in use at the present day. The immense superiority of the press over the pen induced, perhaps, a general belief that nothing more was possible, or, it might be, that the powers of the press were quite equal to the demand for its productions. A new era has, however, arisen, the prompt and extensive circulation of the public journals and other periodicals, requiring powers which the ordinary press could never reach. The first important improvement of the common press, was the invention of the late Lord Stanhope. This press is composed entirely of iron; the table, on which the types rest, and the platten (or surface which gives the impression), are made perfectly level he has thus introduced better materials, and better work manship, to which, however, he added a beautiful combination of levers, to give motion to the screw, causing the platten to descend with decreasing rapidity, and consequently with increasing force, till it reaches the type, when a very great power is obtained. There have been, perhaps, twenty contrivances for obtaining the same effect; but, as a press, Lord Stanhope's invention has not been surpassed. Still it is only a press, and, in point of expedition, has little superiority over its wooden rival, producing two hundred and fifty impressions per hour. Lord Stanhope was also the successful reviver of the art of stereotype founding,-the process of which is as follows:-a brass frame is placed round the form of types; plaster of Paris, mixed with water to the consistence of cream, is then poured on the type, the superfluous plaster being scraped off. When the plaster is hard, the mould is lifted off by means of the brass frame, and from which it is readily detached; it is now baked in an oven, and when well dried and quite hot, it is placed in an iron box, or casting-pot, which has also been heated in the oven; it is now plunged into a large pot of melted type-metal, and kept about ten minutes under the surface, in or der that the weight of the metal may 39 ATHENEUM, VOL. 9, 2d series. force it into all the finest parts of the letters; the whole is then cooled, the mould broken and washed off, and the back of the plate turned in a lathe. This manufacture has been, carried to a considerable extent; Mr. Clowes, the proprietor of one of the largest and best-conducted printing offices in London, has on his premises between seven and eight hundred tons of stereotype plates, belonging to various booksellers; the value may be estimated at 200,000%. corres In connexion with the Stanhope press, may be briefly noticed a little. improvement for the particular purpose of printing music, after a new process, and for which I have obtained a patent.-In this new process the lines are formed of thin slips of copper driven into small blocks of wood, and the notes are formed of copper driven into a separate block. Two note blocks and two ponding sets of lines are placed on the table of the Stanhope press; to the ordinary tympan of the press is attached another tympan, which revolves in the direction of its plane on a pin in the ordinary tympan. Two sheets of paper are placed under two friskets, hinged to the revolving tympan; an impression being now taken, one sheet will receive the notes, and the other the lines. The revolving tympan is then turned half round, when the sheets will have changed places, another impression is taken, when both sheets will be perfected.-This plan is now in operation at the printing-office of Mr. Clowes, to whom I have assigned the exclusive use of the patent. It was in the year 1790 that Mr. W. Nicholson took out a patent for certain improvements in printing, and on reading his specification, every one must be struck with the extent of his ideas on this subject; to him belongs, beyond doubt, the honour of the first suggestion of printing by means of cylinders. The first working printing machine was the invention of Mr. Koenig, a native of Saxony. He submitted his plans to Mr. T. Bensley, the celebrated printer, and to Mr. R. Taylor, the scientific editor of the Philosophical Magazine. These gentlemen liberally encouraged his exertions; and in 1811 he took out a patent for improvements in the common press, which, however, produced no favourable result; he then turned his attention to the use of a cylinder, in order to obtain the impression, and two machines were erected for printing the Times newspaper, the reader of which was told on the 28th of November, 1814, that he held in his hand a newspaper printed by machinery, and by the power of steam. In these machines the type was made to pass under the cylinder, on which was wrapped the sheet of paper, the paper being firmly held to the cylinder by means of tapes; the ink was placed in a cylindrical box, from which it was forced by meaus of a powerful screw depressing a tightly fitted piston; thence it fell between two iron rollers; below these were placed a number of other rollers, two of which had, in addition to their rotatory motion, an end motion, i. e. a motion in the direction of their length; the whole system of rollers terminated in two, which applied the ink to the types. In order to obtain a great number of impressions from the same form, a paper cylinder, (i. e. the cylinder on which the paper is wrapped) was placed on each side the inking apparatus, the form passing under both. This machine produced 1100 impressions per hour; subsequent improvements raised them to 1800 per hour. The next step was the invention of a machine (also by Mr. Koenig) for printing both sides of the sheet, It resembled two single machines placed with their cylinders towards each other, at a distance of two or three feet; the sheet was conveyed from one paper cylinder to the other by means of tapes-the track of the sheet exactly resembling the letter S, if laid horizontally, thus, in the course of this track the sheet was turned over. At the first paper cy linder it received the impression from the first form, and at the second paper cylinder it received the impres sion from the second form; the machine printed 750 sheets on both sides per hour. This machine was erected for Mr. T. Bensley, and was the only one Mr. Koenig made for printing on both sides the sheet, This was in 1815. About this time Messrs. Donkia and Bacon were also contriving a printing machine; having, in 1813, obtained a patent for a machine in which the types were placed on a revolving prism-the ink was supplied by a roller which rose and fell with the irregularities of the prism, and the sheet was wrapped on another prism, so formed as to meet the irregularities of the type prism. One of these machines was erected for the University of Cambridge, and was a beautiful specimen of ingenui ty and workmanship; it was, houever, too complicated, and the inking was defective, which prevented its success. Nevertheless, a great point was attained; for in this machine were first introduced inking rollers, covered with a composition of treacle and glue; in Koenig's machine the rollers were covered with leather, which never auswered the purpose well. In 1815 I obtained a patent for curving stereotype plates, for tat purpose of fixing them on a cylinder. Several of these machines, capiãɛ of printing 1000 sheets per hour on both sides, are at work at the presest day, and twelve machines on this principle were made for the Bank of England a short time previous to the issue of gold. It is curious to observe, that the same object seems to have occupie the attention of Nicholson, Dona and Bacon, and myself, viz. the re volution of the form of types. N cholson sought to do this by a new kind of type, shaped like the stores of an arch.-Donkin and Bac sought to do this by fixing types o a revolving prism, and at last it was completely effected by curving a stereotype plate. In these machines two paper cylinders are placed side by side, and against each of them is placed a cylinder for holding the plates; each of these four cylinders is about two feet diameter; on the surface of the plate cylinder are placed four or five inking rollers, about three inches diameter: they are kept in their position by a frame at each end of the plate cylinder, the spindles of the rollers lying in notches in the frame, thus allowing perfect freedom of motion, and requiring no adjustment. The frame which supports the inking rollers, called the wavingframe, is attached by hinges to the general frame of the machine; and the edge of the plate cylinder is indented, and rubs against the waving frame, causing it to wave, or vibrate to and fro, and, consequently, to carry the inking rollers with it, thus giving them a motion in the direction of their length, called the end motion. -These rollers distribute the ink upon the three-fourths of the surface of the plate cylinder, the other quarter being occupied by the curved sterestype plates. The ink is held in a trough; it stands parallel to the plate cylinder, and is formed by a metal roller, revolving against the edge of a plate; in its revolution, it becomes covered with a thin film of ink; this is conveyed to the plate cylinder, by an inking roller vibrating between both. On the plate cylinder, the ink becomes distributed, as before described, and as the plates pass under the inking rollers, they become charged with colour; as the cylinder continues to revolve, the plates come in contact with a sheet of paper in the first paper cylinder, whence it is carried, by means of tapes, to the second paper cylinder, where it receives an impression on its opposite side, from the plates on the second plate cylinder, and thus the sheet is perfected. These machines are only applicable to stereotype plates, but they formed the foundation of the future success of our printing-machinery, by showing the best method of furnishing, distributing, and applying the ink. In order to apply this method to a machine capable of printing from type, it was only necessary to do the same thing in an extended flat surface, or table, which had been done on an extended cylindrical surface; accordingly, I constructed a machine for printing both sides of the sheet from type, securing, by patent, the inking apparatus, and the mode of conveying the sheet from one paper cylinder to the other by means of drums and tapes. My friend, Mr. A. Applegath, was a joint-proprietor with me in these patents, and he also obtained patents for several improvements. I had given the end motion to the distributing rollers, by moving the frame to and fro in which they were placed. Mr. Applegath suggested the placing these rollers in a diagonal position across the table, thereby producing their end motion in a simpler manner. Another contrivance of Mr. Applegath's was, to place half my inking apparatus on one side the printing cylinder, and half on the other side, in order that one-half the form might be inked on one side, and one-half on the other, and so have a less distance to travel. Another contrivance of Mr. A. was, a method of applying two feeders to the same printing-cylinder. These latter inventions are adapted to newspaper than to book printing. more We have constructed upwards of sixty machines upon our combined patents, modified in twenty-five different ways, for the various purposes of printing books, bank-notes, newspapers, &c. They have, in fact, superseded Mr. Koenig's machines, in the office of Mr. Bensley (who was the principal proprietor of Koenig's patent) and also in the office of the "Times." It may not be uninteresting to state, that no less than forty wheels were |