, see what steam has enabled us to do in regard to the
food for the mind, both in printing it and afterwards in its
distribution. Look, for instance, to Printing House Square--to the
"Times" newspaper. In the short space of one hour 20,000 copies are
thrown off the printing-machine, and, thanks to the express train, the
same day the paper can be read in Glasgow. Still further in this
direction, the value of steam is also shown by its having enabled us to
produce cheap literature, so strikingly instanced in the world-famed
works of Sir Walter Scott, which we are now enabled to purchase at the
small sum of sixpence for each volume--a result which well shows the
application of science to art.

Let us now observe what a varied number of mechanical and agricultural
appliances are required to furnish us with this cheap literature. There
is agriculture, in the growth of the fibre that produces the material of
which the printing paper is made; then the flax-mill is brought into
play to produce the yarn to be woven; then weaving to produce the
cloth; after this, dyeing. Then the fine material is used for various
purposes too numerous to mention; and after it has performed its own
proper work, and is cast away as rags, no more to be thought of by its
owner, it is gathered up as a most precious substance by the papermaker,
who shows us the true value of the cast-off rags. Subjected to the
beautiful and costly machinery of the paper-mill, the rags turn out an
article of so much value that without it the world would almost come to
a stand-still. Yet further, we have next the miner, who by his labour
brings to the surface of the earth the metal required to produce the
type for printing; after this the printing-press; and next the chemist,
who by certain chemical combinations gives us the ink that is to spread
knowledge to the world, by making clear to the eye the thoughts of
authors who have applied their minds for the instruction and amusement
of their fellow-men. But we do not end here; consider also that each and
all, the farmer, the spinner, the weaver, the chemist, the miner, the
printer, and the author, must respectively have a profit out of their
various branches of industry, and does it not strike one forcibly what
a boon to the world is this all-important application of science to
art--putting within the reach of the poor man and the working man the
means of cultivating his mind, and so, by giving him matters of deep
interes