turies, because such a return to an undeveloped system can result in no benefit, and threatens to retard the typographical art in this country.

The revival of medieval taste must be widely spreading amongst us, if its presence in our literature can safely warrant such a conclusion; but those volumes which we have hitherto met with in the garb of a cast-off taste, but very dimly represent the age they would recall. True, they wear the outward semblance, but within the vigour of the early writers is wanting, and, generally speaking, they are sadly deficient in the spirit and tone of that period when Caxton first laboured beneath the shadows of Westminster Abbey. Simply to produce an imitation of the type of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is scarcely worth the experiment, nor can we consider it prudent to persevere in such a purpose, for fear that manner should be mistaken for matter, or that subjects may sometimes wear a pleasing, but treacherous form, which, if met with in the print of the present day, would be recognized at once as of little value, and command but little attention.

We do not wish to say we find all which we here condemn in the volumes before us, but they foreshadow plainly the danger we have just referred to. We witness with satisfaction the revival of the gothic halls and the high-back prie-dieu chairs of the feudal period, not only because they are symbolic of a romantic and chivalrous era, but also for a certain perfection of taste which they embody. It was desirable that they should survive the social aberrations of a frenzied period when everything which possessed a form of beauty, or would give a thrill of pleasure to the eye of taste, was uprooted by the ascetic discipline of Puritanism, which by its excesses vitiated its own principles. By the same natural course of things, the dark and dismal structures which once crowded our thoroughfares, have been succeeded by temples and tenements built in a nobler and a more elevated taste. But what can we say of the early state of the printing art? Had it attained such a perfection that its adoption in the present day can be at all justified? We think not, and our language is so constructed now that a return to the old system may be regarded as impossible, or lexicographers have lived in vain.

We cannot conclude these remarks without recommending those who may think us in error, to refer to the Reports of the Jurors on the Materials of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and when the position of England in that great field of trial is considered, we are sure it will be readily allowed that it is in every way dangerous to be coquetting with the early conceptions of Gutenberg and Schòffer; or even with the comparatively later productions of our early English compositors. Under the head of "JUROR'S REPORTS-PRINTING,"-there is a very interesting account of the state of typography in most of the countries of the world. It is no slight praise to find the Jurors pronouncing some of the Prussian specimens "perfect," a character which we do not find is awarded to our types. The sooner we hasten to model ours upon these "perfect" specimens, the better we shall stand as a nation in the next Exhibition of Universal Art.

TAKING MINE EASE IN MINE INN;

OR A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT "US."

OUTSIDE the Hotel all was desolate-the damp fog of a winter's evening setting in-few pedestrians and fewer carriages. Gradually the twilight deepened, the warm glow of the fire in the coffeeroom became more and more attractive; the lights of the chandelier were lighted, and, with the gloomy street scene in my head, with its straggling lamps and half-hidden cheerless forms, I sank with a feeling of luxury into a soft seat near the fire. It was too soon for coffee, there were no companions to talk to; the directory with its red cover lying on the table near, was an abomination; I could do nothing but think, or dose-I preferred the former.

There was a map of the United States hanging on the wall opposite to me. What a rapid travel my thoughts had immediately back as far as the times of Columbus, Truly we need speak little of railway speed, of atmospheric air rushing into a vacuum at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, of electricity girdling the earth before one has time to say Jack Robinson; all these are nothing compared to the sudden swoop of thought, so to speak-no stopping at stations by the way, no refreshment rooms wanted on the journey, no collisions-however I am not so sure of that, for just after the words of Richard Howitt came into my mind

Oh, great New World! Columbus sought thee;

But what thou art, could he have thought thee,

The image vast his soul possessing,

His heart had burst with too much blessing.
And yet another world was hidden;

Our world unto his glance forbidden

Our mind, with its enlarged dominions

Old prostrate creeds, old spurned opinions.

I say, just at the time these words came into my mind, a collision seemed to take place between the two ideas therein suggested— the down train, as I suppose I must call it, from its tendency downwards into the long-passed regions of the truly "dark ages," came in contact with a fresh up-train, vigorous and furious, an express at the very least, darting onwards towards the realms of fancy. Poor Columbus, and the Mar Algoso, nay, even the lands of Prairie and Red Indians, of buffaloes and rocky mountains, of Longfellow and Fennimore Cooper, were speedily sent to the right about, the last vanishing traces showing that such had been, to my outward eye, were the large printed letters US in the corner of the map.

But the express train, with its sentimental cloud of steam, soon transformed even these, and carried them onwards with the atmosphere around—the old world melted after the manner of dissolving views into the new one, the past into the present, and I began thinking about "us," instead of about the United States. What a card-house of ideas, the reader will exclaim. After the grand structure of Columbus and America had arisen, behold! all is demolished, and we find ourselves back again almost at the point of commencement. "Us," indeed; why the faces in the fog, and the passing carriages, the glimmering lamps, will all reappear. Do they not belong to "us ?"

Com

Only a short stoppage—a breathing time at a station,—and on goes the express train of thought; but this time it branches out into a boundless plain, a never-ceasing prairie, as it were. paratively easy to trace out the progress of civilization-the onward march of science; but to detail the varieties of life, the convolutions of incident, the ramifications of feeling which belong to "us," surely that would be the real "impossible," which some say is not to be found in the Englishman's Dictionary!

-Not to speak of the idealists with their voyages of discovery, which beat everything that Columbus ever achieved—researches into the dim far-away ages of the pre-Adamite Sultans, or of the Chinese Dynasty even before them-prophecies of the good times to come, when the British Museum catalogue shall have been completed -nay, when a second thirty thousand years shall have worn away a double space for the waters of Niagara !

-Also imaginative cases of fiction, which a physician might study, as it has been said of some of Shakespeare's characters.

-What oasis islands spring up then in the great desert plainwhat verdant hills in the endless prairie on which we have entered? After all, there is something interesting about "us." The victories won, the difficulties vanquished, the mighty and enduring monuments, the vast discoveries, the triumphs of art and research, of our theories and conceptions, our hot-pressed civilization, our intensity of barbarism, our philosophy and lucidity here, our ignorance, dark as Erebus there. On the one side, a thousand mysteries proclaiming to us that we have hardly as yet touched the threshold of the portals of knowledge; nature yielding comparatively little to our powerlessness and insignificance; on the other, experience and wisdom, making us, as it were, masters of the seal of things, doing for us miracles, transmitting our written thoughts as a lightning flash through space, measuring for us the central sun, prophecying to us at least some of the events which shall happen in the future.

"And on we press-to life before us—
And watch the dawn that brightens o'er us!
'Mid knowledge vast, of Time's discovering,
And other near us largely hovering."

And, like an ever-springing fountain, refreshing our inmost souls-in many instances, like a very well of truth-lies our literature, with its depths as well as its shallows. Would you bring before you the lights and the shadows of all time-the good and the evil of the myriad of the great "us," there lie the countless volumes in the good old stalwart Saxon tongue, that—

Stronger far than hosts that march

With battle flag unfurled,

Shall go with Freedom, Thought and Truth
To rouse and rule the world.

It climbs New England's forest steeps,
As victor mounts a throne;

Niagara knows and greets that voice,
Still mightier than its own!”

How many thousands of descriptions, how many true and beautiful sentiments, sometimes wreathed into an energetic and powerful narrative, at others teeming with poetic imageries and luxuriant similies, adorned with the bright hues of a happy imagination, pointed with flashing wit, rising into the sublime and the majestic, or, still better than all, sometimes simple, truthful, and from the heart; a pure, native spring, where those who still retain an unprejudiced or unadultered taste may drink, and lose their feverish thirst for a time amid the calm of the waters!

-And is there not a calm for "us" when we read of earnest life—of Loves, Hopes, Fears, realities of pain or pleasure, when they have long passed away. When we know that those hearts which throbbed so wildly at the touch of joy or woe-those beings who lived and suffered-of the same race, perhaps, and of the same passions and feelings as ourselves, who have called forth, it may be, our deepest sympathy or our highest admiration, what a calm, when the wild question of the soul, "Where are they now?" is answered. The quiet endurance, the noble courage, the brightness of genius, the tenderness and the mighty devotion of their love; these things sleep not in the quiet grave. But there, perhaps under our very notice, is the resting place that has shut them out for ever from our mortal eyes, unknown, unnoticed by thousands like themselves. How terrible a lesson to the oppressor-thus far shalt thou come, and no farther. Here shall the pride of hatred and injustice be stayed, its power lost, its chains broken. Here shall throbbing pulses, quivering nerves, wrung hearts rest at

length! And all these things belong to "us," are part of "us." These, and how many more that rise, surging up in every mind, secret hoards of joy, of hope and consolation. We call the large majority of human lives obscure; "presumptuous that we are,” as a modern author writes, "how know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have lighted to renown!"

And if a thought, how much more a deed! one of those unobtrusive, but silent deeds—seeds that are sown around “us,” producing tenfold harvests after many days. Who would not then amongst "us" be up and doing-existing, not merely to have done with existence, that were a poor life; existing, not entirely for the purpose of eating, drinking, and sleeping, or of making money; for if this be all, surely we must weary of it soon; but living for a more enduring purpose-fertilizing around us some little portion of the creation, if possible, in the name of its great Creator, fearlessly and hopefully; for if He be for "us," who shall be against "us."

-In our sadness, which sometimes must come, were it but as a teacher, one of the greatest we have, showing to us the higher heights which we may ascend, revealing to us profundities within ourselves, which otherwise we never could have known. In our sadness is not the mist often taken away from before us? Can we not penetrate into other hearts with sympathy unfelt before, finding our happiness in theirs, discerning the true ends and aims of life. Is it to be wondered at when we look forward to nobler purposes, that stubborn will and unthinking passion require to be quelled and purified, not otherwise could man be

"Herald of a higher race,

And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time.
Within himself from more to more ;
Or, crowned with attributes of woe,
Like glories, move his course, and show

That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,

And battered with the shocks of doom
To shape and use.

"Yes, Sir, did you ring, Sir?" exclaimed something on the earth at this juncture, and I fell from my rapid ascent to the central sun, fathoms upon fathoms down from the "higher race," to perceive an individual in a white choker, with a napkin over one arm, who made me an obsequious inclination, and repeated