The Apocrypha has 183 chapters, 6,081 verses, and 125,185 words. The middle chapter, and the least in the Bible, is the 117th Psalm; the middle verse is the 8th of 118th Psalm; the middle line is the 2nd Book of the Chronicles, 4th chapter, and 16th verse; the word and occurs in the Old Testament 35,535 times; the same word in the New Testament occurs 10,684 times; the word Jehovah occurs 6,855 times.

Old Testament. The middle Book is Proverbs; the middle chapter, the 29th of Job; the middle verse is the 2nd Book of Chronicles, 20th chapter, and 18th verse; the least verse is the 1st Book of Chronicles, 1st chapter, and 1st verse.

New Testament. The middle is the Thessalonians 2nd; the middle chapter is between the 13th and 14th of the Romans; the middle verse is the 17th of the 17th chapter of the Acts; the least verse is the 35th of the 11th chapter of the Gospel by Saint John.

The 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra has all the letters of the alphabet in it.

The 19th chapter of the 2nd Book of Kings, and the 37th chapter of Isaiah, are alike.

The Book of Esther has 10 chapters, but neither the words Lord nor God in it.

The 26th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is generally considered as the finest piece of reading extant.-Chronology, or Historian's Companion.

ORIGIN OF THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH.

Wickliffe, who exercised the right of private judgment in England a century and a half before Luther taught it as a principle in Germany, may be said to have been the first dissenter from the church of Rome.

After a life wonderfully preserved from the unsparing cruelty of ecclesiastical power, by the protection of Edward III., his memory was affectionately revered, and, as printing had not been discovered, his writings were scarce, and earnestly sought. He may be said to have been the first who translated the New Testament into English; and a splendid edition of the translation made by Wickliffe and his followers, has just been published by the University of Oxford, in four quarto volumes, under the editorship of Sir Frederick Madden and the Rev. J. Forshall.

DOMESDAY BOOK.

How many read of Domesday Book without knowing what it is, or inquiring into what it means; let us then inform them that it is a valuable record of antiquity, in which the estates of this kingdom are registered, begun in 1080, by order of William the Conqueror, and compiled in less than six years, written on 380 double pages of vellum, in one hand; and it is, without doubt, the most important and interesting document possessed by any nation in Europe; it is also remarkable, that on searching this book, we find such a similarity in the orthography of names of towns upwards of seven centuries ago, and the present period: for instance, the following towns in Sussex.

Bristelmetune
Wordinges
Prestetune

Brighthelmstone
Worthing
Preston

It was called Domesday Book, because it was intended to carry down to the latest posterity, circumstances and events of former times. That it has thus far given an earnest of its deserving the title, all historians agree. Such, reader, is the celebrated Domesday Book, one of those records so peculiar to the land of the venerable Bede and the immortal Newton.

Domesday Book has been printed by the government, in four folio volumes; and a most valuable introduction to it by Sir Henry Ellis, has been separately printed in 2 vols. octavo.

PAPER.

This useful article was invented in China, when the art of making sheets of paper from the bark of trees, from bamboo, old rags, silk, hemp, or cotton, reduced to pulp, dates from the commencement of the second century of the Christian era. Before the invention of paper, the papyrus was in general use among European nations; the use of this, however, ceased about the ninth century, and was supplanted by the cotton paper, made in the east. The introduction of paper-making in France, dates from the fourteenth century; in England, its manufacture was much later. From some verses printed in a book by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1496, entitled Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus rerum, it appears that the paper had been made for it by John Tate, jun., at his mill in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In 1558, Queen Elizabeth granted to her jeweller, John Speilman, the right to erect a paper-mill at Dartford. So late as the middle of the last century, only common wrapping-paper was manufactured in Great Britain. It was not until 1770, that the celebrated J. Whatman, established fine paper-making at Maidstone, in Kent, after his return from the continent, where he had worked as a

journeyman. In 1803, Mr. Bryan Donkin produced a self-acting machine for continuous paper, which he erected at Frogmore, in Hertfordshire; and in 1804, he put up the second machine at Two Waters. In 1809, Mr. Dickinson invented another method of making endless paper; since which time various patents have been taken out for improvements in parts of the machinery, or for other machinery to be applied in various stages of the process. Wire marks, or water marks, as they are called, were formerly applied to paper to distinguish it. On the paper used by Caxton and the other early printers, these marks consisted of an ox head and star, a collared dog's head, a crown, a shield, a jug, &c. A head with a fool's-cap and bell, gave name to the paper called foolscap; and post paper seems to have derived its name from the mark of a horn, which was formerly carried by the postman, and blown to announce his arrival. The annual value of paper manufactured in this country is said to be two millions sterling.

PRINTING.

The press is the most important instrument of civilisation. It is by the aid of printing that different nations have imparted to each other their thoughts and their feelings, and have thus received a combined existence. In every age, and in all countries, printing denotes the state of civilization, of which books are the reflex, and the history of the human mind is written in bibliography. The origin of the art is involved in obscurity, there being no clue by which it can be clearly traced, yet it is doubtless of very early date: some authors maintain that printing was practised during the building of Babylon. Some have supposed that the knowledge of the art was originally obtained from the Chinese. Hence we find that Abdalla's Chinese History notices the wooden tablets engraven to print entire pages on one side of the leaf, and afterwards practised by Coster and other block-printers in the Low Countries. Four names have appeared in the controversy respecting the invention of printing:-John Gutenberg of Strasburg; John Fust (or Faust) of Mayence; Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim; and Lawrence Coster of Haarlem. It is supposed that Caxton brought the art of printing into England in 1474, and that this date is indicated in the centre of his device. Stow says, that he first exercised his business in an old chapel near the entrance of the Abbey; but a very curious placard in Mr. Douce's library at Oxford, shows that he printed in the Almonry. The two largest collections from Caxton's press, are those in the British Museum, and in Earl Spencer's library at Althorpe. Soon after the first origin of movable types, the art of printing had attained a great degree of perfection, and it was not till the second half of the last century, that owing to the efforts of Ibarra in Spain; of Baskerville and of Bulmer in England; of the

Foulises and the Ruddimans in Scotland; of Bodini in Italy; and of the Didot family in Paris, any real progress can be pointed out.

As a striking proof of the present improved state of the typographic art, we need only point to THE TIMES newspaper, which prints 35,000 copies every day; but on the day following. the Duke of Wellington's funeral (viz. Nov. 19, 1852) 70,000 copies were printed, being 15,000 more than had ever been printed of any one number before. The 70,000 copies were printed off in six hours and a quarter by their wonderful machine. In London, the centre of the printing and book business, there were in 1851, 3000 men and 1500 boys employed as Compositors, besides 800 men and 350 boys at press. Nearly 3000 works (including new editions) are published yearly, of the value of £450,000: 230 · monthly and quarterly magazines produce £500,000 yearly. The stamp-duty on newspapers in 1845, was £327,682; in 1850, sixty-five millions and three-quarters of penny stamps, and eleven millions and three-quarters of halfpenny stamps, were used by 159 London and 222 English provincial newspapers.

Seven

millions and three-quarters of penny stamps, and half a million. of halfpenny stamps, by 110 Scottish papers. Six millions and three quarters of penny, and half a million of halfpenny stamps, by 102 Irish papers,

TYPE-FOUNDING.

Type-founding was an improvement upon the Chinese engraved blocks. With these forms, or blocks, they could print nothing else, because the letters could not be transposed. Guttenberg, however, assisted by John Fust, or Faust, discovered the means of cutting the forms of all the letters of the alphabet, which they called matrices, from which again they cast characters in copper or tin, of sufficient hardness to resist the required pressure. Faust's son-in-law, Schoeffer, adopted the more easy method of casting the types, which, with various improvements, has been continued to the present time. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, native talent was at so low an ebb, that nearly all the types used in London were imported from Holland. William Caslon, however, has the honour of removing this stigma upon English ingenuity, and of establishing the first foundery for British types.

The most important operation of a type-foundery is the formation of the punches, which are well-tempered pieces of steel. The face of the punch exactly resembles that of the finished type: the letter being reversed, and in high relief. The punch being hardened, it is then struck into a piece of copper, which receives the impression from the end of the punch, and forms a mould (called the matrix) for the face of the type, by which an expert workman will cast 500 letters in an hour. At the close of the last century, the Younger Fourmier, a punch-cutter and type

founder, caused some improvements to be made in this art; and M. Fermin Didot of Paris, who engraved the types used by his father for his beautiful publications, exerted himself for the purpose of imparting to types of all descriptions the highest degree of elegance. Mr. Whittingham of Chiswick first re-introduced the old letters of Garamond and Jenson, and has been followed by many of the London printers, so true it is "there is nothing new in this world except that which is old."

STEREOTYPING.

This is one of the means for making fac-similes in type-metal of pages of types, woodcuts, &c., about the eighth of an inch thick, and, to keep the plates of a volume of one uniform thickness, each plate is turned in a lathe. The process is as follows:-When the form of type is ready, the face of it is oiled with a brush, then burnt plaster of Paris (gypsum), mixed with water to the consistence of cream, is poured upon it; this matrix is then dried in an oven, and afterwards secured in a frame, and immersed in a caldron of melted metal. The plate thus produced, is then passed to the picker, who removes any superfluous metal. The first attempt at stereotyping was made by Samuel Luchtmans, who obtained plates by a process of clichage. About 1700, Valleyre printed in Paris some almanacs which he had obtained by casting. In 1725, Mr. William Ged, a goldsmith in Edinburgh, printed an edition of Sallust from plates; and in 1784, M. Hoffman, of Alsace, France, succeeded in obtaining stereotype plates from moulds of clay mixed with gelatine. But all the previous methods were superseded by the present process, invented by Lord Stanhope in 1800. Numerous attempts have since been made to substitute for plaster moulds the employment of sheets of paper with whiting placed between them; but the results appear inferior to the plaster moulds. For vignettes, casts of bitumen answer very well, and stereotype plates of bitumen give good results.

BOOKBINDING.

Splendour in the binding of books is a taste which dates back from remote times. These magnificent covers with their rich bindings were executed for the greater part by jewellers, who enriched them with reliefs in gold, silver, steel, and ivory; with precious stones, enamels, and other decorations. The ancient rolls were fastened together, either in the centre or from the end, by means of a boss, upon which the most cunning and curious art was frequently lavished. Velvet seems to have been the favourite covering for books at an early period. Calf leather came into use about the same time as vellum, during the fifteenth century. At the beginning of the next century, all the skill of the work