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tanshaw, R. N. Mr. Fisher was interred at the cemetery in the Harrow road, being followed to to the grave by his children, private friends, foremen, and the principal part of his workpeople, to many of whom he had been an indulgent master during a period of thirty-six years.

One of the latest works published by Mr. Henry Fisher was A History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, edited by Edward Baines, esq.* M. P. for Leeds, in four vols. 4to. 1837, July 12. The printers of Edinburgh celebrated the fourth centenary of the invention of the art of printing, by a social entertainment in the theatre-royal. Thomas Campbell, author of the Pleasures of Hope, and other poems, in the chair. In the course of the evening, the following song, written for the occasion by Mr. Alexander Smart, printer, was sung by Mr. Heatley, printer: the music by Mr. George Croall:

When liberty first sought a home on the earth,
No altar the goddess could find,
Till art's greatest triumph to printing gave birth,
And her temple she reared in the mind.
The phantoms of ignorance shrunk from her sight,
And tyranny's visage grew wan;

As wildly he traced, in the Volume of Light,
The pledge of redemption to man!

All hail the return of the glorious day,
When freedom her banner unfurled--
And sprung from the Press the Promethean ray
That dawned on a slumbering world;
When Science, exulting in freedom and might,
Unveiled to the nations her eye,

And waved from her tresses, refulgent in light,
A glory that never can die.

The mighty Enchanter, whose magical key
Unlocked all the fountains of mind,

The thoughts of the mighty in triumph set free,
In cloistered confusion confined;

The lay of the Poet, the lore of the Sage,
Burst forth from obscurity's gloom,

And started to life, in the wonderful page,
The glories of Greece and of Rome.

Great ark of our freedom! the Press we adore-
Our glory and power are in thee;

A voice thou hast wafted to earth's farthest shore-
The shout of the great and the free.
The slave's galling fetters are burst by the might,
The empire of reason is thine;
And nations rejoice in the glorious light,
Which flows from a fountain divine.

Im

* Edward Baines, esq., M. P. for Leeds, was born at Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, in 1774, and was apprenticed to Thomas Walker, printer and stationer, at Preston; but before the expiration of his time he removed to Leeds, and was placed with Messrs. Binns and Brown. mediately after the termination of his apprenticeship he formed a connexion in trade with Mr. John Fenwick, and carried on the printing business for about a-year, under the firm of Baines and Fenwick, Leeds. This connexion having been dissolved, he succeeded, in the year 1800, after the death of Mr. Binns, to the proprietorship of the Leeds Mercury, of which he became the sole conductor. In the hands of Mr. Baines, the Leeds Mercury became a journal of extensive political influence in the north of England, which has been enlarged since he obtained the co-operation of his son, and partner in business, Mr. Edward Baines, in the year 1828. In 1799, he married Charlotte, the daughter of Mr. Matthew Talbot, known in the literary and theological world as the author of a very laborious work, under the title of Analysis of the Bible. The issue of this marriage has been six sons and five daughters, all of whom survive, except two sons, who died in infancy. It is curious that Mr. Fisher and Mr. Baines, natives of the same town, neither of them indebted to the favours of fortune in early life, but entirely dependent on their own exertions, should have both risen to such a rank in their respective occupations. On the ap

1837, Aug. 14. FESTIVAL IN HONOUR OF JOHN GUTENBERG, the inventor of printing, held at Mentz, (Mayence) in Germany.* The opposite engraving gives a correct view of the fine statue, by Thurwalsden, which had been erected by a general subscription, to which all Europe had been invited to contribute. "We apprehend," says a writer in the Penny Magazine, who had witnessed the important ceremony, "that the English, amidst the incessant claims upon their attention for the support of all sorts of undertakings, whether of a national or individual character, had known little of the purpose which the good citizens of Mayence had been advocating with unabating zeal for several years ;†and perhaps the object itself was not calculated to call forth any very great liberality on the part of those who are often directed in their bounties as much by fashion as by their own convictions. Be that as it may, England literally gave nothing towards the monument of a man whose invention has done as much as any other single cause to make England what she is, The remoteness of the cause may also have lessened its importance; and some people, who, without any deserts of their own, are enjoying a more than full share of the blessings which have been shed upon us by the progress of intellect, (which determines the progress of national wealth) have a sort of instinctive notion that the spread of knowledge is the spread of something inimical to the pretensions of mere riches. We met with a lady on board the steam-boat ascending the Rhine, two days before the festival at Mayence, who, whilst she gave us an elaborate account of the fashionable dulness of the baths of Baden, and Nassau, and all the other German watering places, told us by all means to avoid Mayence during the following week, as a crowd of low people from all parts would be there, to make a great fuss about a printer who had been dead two or three hundred years. The low people did assemble in great crowds: it was computed that at least 15,000 strangers had arrived to do honour to the first printer. In the morning of the 14th, all Mayence was in motion by six o'clock; and at eight a procession was formed to the cathedral, which was conducted with a pointment of Mr. Macauley to the supreme council of India, the electors of Leeds bestowed upon Mr. Baines the highest mark of their confidence and esteem, by returning him to parliament on the 17th of February, 1834, as their representative, without solicitation on his part, without cost, and on those principles of purity of election which he had so long and so strenuously advocated.

To show that the important controversy for the honour of the invention of printing is not yet decided, the reader is referred to the following recent works:

Verhandeling van Koning over den oorsprong, de uitvinding, verbetering en volmaking der Boekdrukkunst te Haarlem 1836, bij Loosjes.

Gedenkschriften wegens het vierde ceuiogetij de van de urtvinding der Boekdrukkunst door Lourens Janszoon Koster van studswege gevierd te Haarlem den 10 en 11 Julji 1823, bij eeuverzameld door Vincent Lossjes,te Haarlem 1824. M. Jacobus Scheltema's geschied en Letterkundig Mengelwerk vol. v.-vi.

Antologia di Fierenze vol. 41. Jan.-April, 1831. See also, A Dictionary of the Anglo Saxon Language, &c. by the rev. J. Bosworth, LL. D. London, 1838. Intro. duction, page xcii.-xciii.

+ See page 128 ante.

probably amount to but a small portion of the whole sum of good which in its ultimate extension it is destined to confer upon our race.

1837, Aug. Died, WESTON HATFIELD,* whe had been for upwards of twenty years printer and editor of the Cambridge Independent Press, and other newspapers. He died at Huntingdon, aged forty-two years.

quiet precision that showed they were engaged in a solemn act. The fine old cathedral was crowded; the bishop of Mayence performed high mass;-the first bible printed by John Gutenberg was displayed, that first bible the germ of millions of bibles that have spread the light of Christianity throughout the habitable globe. The mass ended, the procession again advanced to the adjacent square, where the statue was to 1837, Sept. 5. Died, OWEN REES, late of be opened. Here was erected a vast amphi-the firm of Messrs. Longman and Co. booksellers, theatre, where, seated under their respective ban- Paternoster-row, London. It was only at Midners, were deputations from all the great cities summer that Mr. Rees, after a period of more of Europe. Amidst salvos of artillery the veil than forty years of great responsibility, retired was removed from the statue, and a hymn was from the cares and anxieties of business, with sung by a thousand voices. Then came orations; the prospect of enjoying his remaining years in -then dinners-balls-oratorios-boat-races- repose, at his beautiful residence at Gelligran, processions by torch-light. For three days the near Neath, Glamorganshire, South Wales, where population of Mayence was kept in a state of he had done much, not only to improve his own high excitement; and the echo of the excite- estate, but to introduce valuable improvements ment went through Germany,—and Gutenberg! in the surrounding country. Previous to his learGutenberg! was toasted in many a bumper of ing town, an entertainment was given to him, as Rhenish wine amidst this cordial and enthusiastic a tribute to his integrity and gentlemanly conpeople." duct; and above forty of his oldest friends and The basso-relievos on the pedestal of Guten-associates assembled to pay this gratifying comberg's statue exhibit a part of the process by which the mighty change has been produced by the discovery of the art of printing from moveable types by John Gutenberg, at Mayence.The printer is examining a matrix for casting types, and comparing a printed sheet with a manuscript. If he could have foreseen the entire consequences of the apparently simple mechanical arrangements which he was perfecting, it is justly possible that Gutenberg might have become dizzy with the prospect, and negligent of some minute point upon which much depended, have left an incomplete discovery to another generation, instead of the perfect art which printing so soon became. Who can read of the invention of Gutenberg of Mayencewho can participate in the blessings of that invention-and not perceive the immense multiplication of the power of books which must have instantly followed the discovery of the art of multiplying their numbers by the printing press? It was the mightiest revolution which the history of the world had known-at least if measured as it ought to be, not merely by the tumult and crash of change which it occasioned at the moment, but by its enduring operation, and the far reach of its consequences. It might be said, indeed, to contain in its bosom the seeds of all future revolutions. The wave which it set in motion has been rolling on till now. But that wave has much further to roll.

"Tyrants! in vain, ye trace the wizard ring; In vain ye limit mind's unwearied spring; What can ye lull the winged winds asleep, Arrest the rolling world, or chain the deep? No! the wild wave contemns your sceptred hand! It roll'd not back when Canute gave command." Much as the art of printing has accomplished, its greatest triumphs, we believe, are yet to come. Mighty as are the benefits mankind have derived from this noble invention during the space of four centuries which it has been in operation, they

pliment. Few men in the metropolis, perhaps, ever had larger opportunities of cultivating the acquaintance and intimacy of men distinguished in all the walks of literature, and in bringing forward their productions, and of the friendly intercourse which subsisted between them and him. Mr. Rees was a warm patron of the drama, and an acute and excellent dramatic critic. He had been unwell for a few weeks, and thought his native air might restore him to health and strength. But, alas for human hopes! he gradually declined, and at last yielded to his fate at the age of sixty-seven. He was unmarried. Mr. Rees was a constant benefactor of the necessitous and distressed.

1837, Sept. 7. Died, DAVID PRENtice, who had been the printer, editor, and a considerable shareholder of the Glasgow Chronicle, from its commencement in 1810. Mr. Prentice was descended from along line of honourable ancestors† He was the only son of Mr. Thomas Prentice, of Lanark, one of the earliest burgh reformers in Scotland,and his mother was the niece of James Thomson, author of the Seasons, from whom he inherited much of his distinguished relative's fervent temperament, love of liberty, and overflowing benevolence. In 1810, Mr. Prentice published An Essay on the Currency, in which he showed talents of the first order, and which could not have failed to distinguish him as a writer on political economy, had he devoted him

* Mrs. Elizabeth Carter Hatfield, the founder, and up to her death the sole proprietor, of the Huntingdon, Bedford, and Peterborough Gazette, and Cambridge Independent Press. She died at Cambridge, May 4, 1838, aged eightythree years.

+ He was the nephew of Mr. Archibald Prentice, of Covington, a man whose extraordinary mental powers and sterling integrity placed him on a level with the first men of the country. He was the great grandson of Archs bald Prentice, laird of Stone, who fought for the Covenant at Bothwell bridge, in 1679; and he was the great grast grandson of sir John Prentice, laird of Thom, who wai the period of the restoration, in 1660. deputy governor of Dunkirk, for the commonwealth, w

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