CURRENT LITERATURE.
Italy and France: an Editor's Holiday. By Alexander Mackie. (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.)—The editor of the IVarrington Guardian, taking his holiday, but utilising it, as the manner of editors seems to be, for the purposes of his craft, wrote sundry letters about what he saw on his travels. These letters appeared in his journal, and are now repub- lished. And indeed they are quite worth republication. They describe impressions of travel in a very simple, natural way, and are throughout eminently readable. Books without number have indeed been written about the two countries which he visited, yet in both there always seems to be room for something new. Paris is the city of change, and Rome, unmoved for centuries, is very different as it is now from what it was as little as five years ago. The speciality of Mr. Mackie's book is his deseription of foreign printing-houses. He is himself an inventor and improver of the art, and indeed mentions it as one of the objects of his hook is to exhibit a specimen of a volume "entirely set by a steam type-composing machine." We do not profess to have any opinion on the value of the process, but we have great pleasure in letting our readers judge from Mr. Mackie's description of it The composer is purely automatic, and its selection of the proper letters and spaces is guided entirely lay means of perforated paper, which may be perforated anywhere, and at various rates of speed, the composer running at a fixed speed of 12,000 an hour. The per- forated paper may be used as often as required for future editions at home or abroad, and for as utany sizes of type as may be required. The same perforated paper may be reproduced to any extent by merely mechanical means, and be originally so perforated as to produce the most accurate justification as the type leaves the machine." Though Mr. Mackie is doubtless the best possible judge of the externals of a news- paper, we sometimes question his opinion about its contents. What in the world can he be thinking of when he commends "the entire ab- sence of personalities" from French newspapers? What ! M. Paul de Cassagnac not personal?
Previous page
