dental impression of a stripe on a pleated piece of cloth, and Lane's net is attributed to an eccentric lathe. Such results of mechanism may advantageously be combined with manual or artistic operation, as of old in the dominoterie the outline printed by a block was filled up by hand; and this combination of higher and lower degrees of mechanism is seen in the combined use of cylinder printing, with the old fashioned block to put in a few additional colours. Grounds produced by eccentric turning receive flowers, &c. drawn by the designer; and in the higher classes of engraving the parallel lines are supplied by machine ruling. In the beautiful medallic engraving, after the artist has supplied the model, the rest of the translation into the language of linear surface is wholly mechanical. The perfection of work executed by machinery is familiar to all; but even this is sometimes a defect, and in lace, for instance, a special provision is introduced into the mechanism to distort its action occasionally, and give the manufactured article some such blemishes and irregularities as might arise from human accident or carelessness.

On the employment of machinery the question of copyright depends. Copyright is hardly perceptible while books are multiplied by manual art; but it is very important when printing presses and machines are in use. It was unimportant when the needle added ornament to the hangings or vestments, and all-important when the design is given by the engraved cylinder. An invention of the most trivial intrinsic nature becomes weighty by multiplication, and the importance of another novelty individually valuable may yield pre-eminence to it. A patent for a button has often paid better than one for a steam engine. It was the boast of the Penny Magazine they were the first patrons of a superior style of wood-cutting. Nor is at all unlikely that we may one day see the manufacturer giving a commission for a dress pattern at as liberal a rate as a nobleman extends to a royal academician for a picture. The picture is for one, the pattern is for 10,000.

It must hereafter become an important branch of the science of taste, to ascertain what kinds of beauty best admit of repetition by mechanical means. To what extent this will extend it is hard to say. It involves two points for estimation :—first, the number of purchasers for a single pattern or ornament, and perhaps the number of repetitions that weary the eye of each purchaser; and secondly the degree of repetition occurring in the article itself. In a Greek temple all the capitals are alike; in a Norman one they are sometimes all different, while a dress pattern may consist of almost endless repetition of a small spot or check. A single Manchester factory boasted of a dozen miles of calico in a single year. The fashionable arts, too, like newspapers, require not only multitudinous copies, but those produced with the utmost rapidity. Thus the cylinder engine operates in two minutes on an amount of calico equal to that covered by 448 applications of the old block. In a complicated pattern of different colours, five cylinders will do the work of 2240 blockings almost instantaneously. In twenty-five years the time of getting up a design for calico was stated to have been reduced to onequarter of the time, and a design for embroidery to require but the twentieth portion.

The powers of multiplication vary in different branches of art; thus it is said that a woodcut will print 100,000 impressions well, while a copperplate, though seemingly so much more durable, gives (owing to the friction in cleaning the plate for each copy) only 1500 perfect ones, 1500 defective, and perhaps 1000 more grey and feeble ones. Even a steel-plate suffers after 10,000 copies. Mr. Babbage, however, asserts that he had seen a first impression from steel, and an eighty-thousandth one presenting no difference sufficient to identify the proof copy. When further multiplication, however, is desirable, a variety of processes are available for copying the original, not on paper, but metal, and so obtaining as many originals as are required. Again, as the same pattern is repeated

again and again on the calico cylinder, the practice is to engrave a small cylinder first, and then print from this into the larger one while soft, and afterwards harden it. In this manner the unit engraving is executed fifty times on the cylinder which actually prints. In Mr. Babbage's work will be found an illustration of six successive operations of copying the impression, in each case becoming in turn a type for the succeeding operation. By such means the cost of the design, even when the artist is fairly remunerated, is quite unfelt by the consumer. One witness estimated it at end of the whole cost of the manufactured article in calico printing, in which the design might cost from five shillings to twenty shillings, the engraving from five pounds to ten pounds; but the whole dress would cost but a few shillings, and the proportion of cost of design on this would be a very small fraction; and this cost too is lessened by every new improvement, an engraving costing ten pounds in 1808 being now obtainable for two pounds. It is when production on a large scale is the object that the English gain the superiority. They concentrate their genius in the great inventions, and this, together with their mineral wealth, renders them unrivalled, and almost unapproachable where machinery can be employed. Railroad inventions are valuable property; and it is said that of 260 French patents for rails, &c. the three or four that were good for anything were English. In patterns our dessins lourds find no favour in any country. Now a design till recently was not property at all. Mr. Lockett spoke of 300 engraved cylinders executed (our execution is indisputable) for France, for Germany, Prussia, Russia, Silesia, Saxony, Italy and Spain. Six indeed were English, the rest were French; but where mechanism applies, that is in the "eccentrics," our designs take the lead. In concluding this part of the subject, it may be remarked that it is mechanical repetition that developes a commercial value in form in itself, both as an independent thing as well as an adjective quality. In the latter case it does most mate

rially affect value. A pound of steel is worth twopence; a watch chain made of it (the little chain that coils round the fusee) is also worth twopence. Now the twopence worth of iron will make 20,000 twopence worths of chain, and the change in the value is merely a new form, giving new uses and properties. It was said of an engraver, that on six inches of paper he would draw up 20,000 men, and confer immortality on Alexander the Great and Louis the Fourteenth. Still the form is inseparable from the metal, so far as the public are concerned. To the chain-maker the form has an independent value; apart from any particular chain it might be a patent or design. The watch buyer, however well he might know the form, would be no nearer the attainment of the chain; but to a man capable of working in metal, that form is a means of buying iron at twopence a pound, and selling it for 40,000 pence.

Forms, considered in themselves, are of various kinds; they are linear, superficial, or solid. Among solids, form in relief is distinguished from that in the round, and they may be simple or aggregated, as a woven fabric, for instance. A solid, again, is simple and rigid, as a tool; or consisting of pieces capable of various positions relatively to one another, as a machine. The size varies from the smallest point attainable by the microscope to the limits of the astronomer's subjects. Forms too minute for appreciation belong to chemistry.

Forms must also be considered as to their relation to one another; one may be a variation of another: by addition, subtraction, or alteration; it may be a combination of two or more, or a portion of one; and any number of forms may be more or less similar, and either stand apart from one another or graduate by imperceptible degrees. The important point to attend to is, that geometric differs from valuable, economic or commercial form; a mere outline, by an old master, ranks high in the scale of valuable form; a simple arrangement of stripes may be made much of by the manufacturer; a round piece of metal, with a pinhole in the centre, when turned to account

for a particular defect of vision, is registered as a new form, while a highly finished or an elaborate piece of machinery may be held a mere imitation.

SECTION II.

HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT.

In briefly noticing the history of the subject, it may be remarked that the subject has till lately only occupied the attention of legislators and jurists at uncertain intervals; and although the subject has been more frequently renewed and agitated of late years, it has been but little studied by the jurist or statistician; and information respecting the subject is widely scattered, and must be sought for under any head rather than its own.

The earliest mention of anything analogous to copyright is stated to be at Venice in 1469, and that something similar existed in Germany in 1486, in combination with a censorship of the press. There is no trace of it among the elaborate provisions of the civil Roman law. In this country an act passed in 1640, contains (it is said) the first mention of "owners" of copies of books, though it would seem that the law had indirectly legalised rights which at first existed only among the members of the Stationers' Company. Patents for invention were already in existence, but the nature of such an invention as would introduce a new manufacture into the realm could seldom be capable of definition as a form. During the reign of the Stuarts the fine arts received more or less patronage, and engraving, medalling and other reproductive arts began to supply the means of bringing high art into the company of limited fortune. The manufacture of woven fabrics, already extensively developed as one of the useful arts, began in the seventeenth century to offer a field for the application of printing to decorative purposes. Its first locality was Augsburgh. In 1676 calico printing is said to have reached England, and to have been practised near London in 1690. There was, by authentic records, a print work at Richmond, esablished by a French