Therein They Failed, Judged By The Monograph Standard, But Gave A Subtle Food For The Mind. Some Of This I Would Fain See Now Inspiring The Works And Words Of Our Great Men Of Science And Thought - A Little Alchemy.

A great change is slowly going forward all over the printing-press world, I mean wherever men print books and papers.

The Chinese are perhaps outside that world at present, and the other Asian races; the myriads, too, of the great southern islands and of Africa. The change is steadily, however, proceeding wherever the printing-press is used. Nor Pope, nor Kaiser, nor Czar, nor Sultan, nor fanatic monk, nor muezzin, shouting in vain from his minaret, nor, most fanatic of all, the fanatic shouting in vain in London, can keep it out - all powerless against a bit of printed paper. Bits of printed paper that listen to no command, to which none can say, 'Stand back; thou shalt not enter.' They rise on the summer whirlwinds from the very dust of the road, and float over the highest walls; they fall on the well-kept lawns - monastery, prison, palace - there is no fortress against a bit of printed paper. They penetrate where even Danae's gold cannot go. Our Darwins, our Lyalls, Herschels, Faradays - all the immense army of those that go down to nature with considering eye - are steadfastly undermining and obliterating the superstitious past, literally burying it under endless loads of accumulated facts; and the printing-presses, like so many Argos, take these facts on their voyage round the world.

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