white dust, formed into an obstructive
conglomerate by innumerable small filaments,
through which it soon became impossible for
the pen to make way? And now what marvels
of manufactured rags are current under the
names of De la Rue and Marion! What a fairy
transmutation from worn-out table-cloths
and decayed shirt-sleeves, to the diaphanous,
smooth, pale blue, or pink, or delicate sea-green,
or bewitching violet-grey sheets which
carry lovers' vows through the general, or
convey dinner invitations by the district post!
Then, think of the lace-edged paper, what a
wonder that was when it first came out? and
even now, though Ave have become
accustomed to it, and it has grown sadly
vulgarised, still it is a very beautiful thing in
the abstract; and when we think of it ab
origine, a very striking triumph of ingenious
invention. Gilded, silvered, and painted,
embossed papers are also beautiful in
themselves; although we limit their use chiefly
to soap-box covers, and labels, and would
count it the height of bad taste to set them
in conspicuous places; but they are very
pretty, notwithstanding, and in various forms
are of some use, and a vast deal of ornament,
in our daily wants. Painted papers come
into a higher category. These may be made,
of course, exquisite works of art, worth
hundreds or thousands, according to the hand
employed on them; but we are speaking
now only of machine decorations—coarser
ornaments put on simply for effect, and without
much cost of capital, or expenditure of
brains in the original invention.

But to return to simple letter-paper; for,
if we go into all the branches of the subject,
if we wander into wall papers, or to where
great firms manufacture their distinctive
signs, and fasten Baxter's processes to chip
or card box-lids, by the thousand, we shall
make a volume, not an article, and overrun a
whole issue of this publication, instead of
confining ourselves to the modest niche
allowed us.

We spoke disrespectfully, a short time
ago, of the geological formations and
disguised limes of our early youth; but if we go
farther back still we shall see cause to be
grateful, even for that. Distant friends have
been reduced to pitiable straits in early
times for want of some such medium; and
the very worst piece of writing-paper ever
made would have been a Godsend to poor
wretches fain to knot parti-coloured cords,
or string together leaves of trees, for their
sole letters of condolence or affection. Stones,
and bricks, bark, rind, the thin wood which is
neither bark nor rind, fish-skins, the entrails
of serpents, the backs of tortoises, mutton
shoulder-blades, and, to this day, for certain
purposes known to all schoolboys, slates.
All these have been used instead of the
cream-laid and blue wove of our modern
delight; and waxen tablets, wooden tables,
ivory, linen, lead, parchment, and sticks,
have also had their day, and their steady
patrons, to whom they were sufficient and
commodious. But to us the quipos which
the soft Peruvians knotted, or the Beth-luis-non,
—the Irish alphabet of leaves,—seem but
poor precursors of our fashionable fine
lady's stationery, of scented sealing-wax,
tinted paper, violet ink, and gold pen; all in
a little papier mâché desk, which Queen Mab
might have used had she been big enough, or
ever been at school.

Every nation has its different writing-materials,
as it has speech and habits peculiar
to itself, and differing from the rest of the
world. And though, wherever European
influence has spread, paper made from linen
rags has been one of the circumstances
spread with it; yet the natives of many
countries are conservative, and will not adopt
improvements which, they think, imply fallibility
in the past, and insecurity for the
future. It is not every one to whom changes
are education, or who is willing to learn of
his neighbour. China, Japan, and other
Mongolian countries are special examples of
such conservatism.

The East has always patronised vegetable
stationery. The Cingalese scribes write the
love-letters dictated to them on the leaves of
the talipot-palm; the Brahminical manuscripts
sent in the beginning of this century
to Oxford from Fort Saint George, are
written on the leaves of the ampana, or Palma
malabarica; in the Coral Islands of the Maldives,
the customary letter-paper is the
macaraquean, the leaf of which is said to be nine
feet long, and a foot and a half broad; and
in the East Indies, it is the Musa arbor, or
plaintain, after being dried in the sun. Until
the arrival of the French, with their papier de
luxe, the Algerines used to make a paper of
the fibres of the agave, originally a native of
Mexico. Indeed, all the palm tribe are valuable
for writing materials. Hermannus
gives an account of a monster palm, called
codda pana, or Palma montana malabarica,
the round plicated leaves of which are twenty
feet broad, being used for coverings of houses,
for cloaks, and for stationery, by the whole
population of a district. Part of one leaf only
is sufficient for a moderate-sized book; and
the manner in which it is used is, by writing
between the folds, making the characters
through the outer cuticle. Some American
trees have the same properties. One of
them, called the xagua, forms a Spanish cloak
of no mean quality; while, from its innermost
substance, a fine white pellucid
membrane is taken, like the skin of an egg, as
large as our parchment skins, and not
inferior to our best paper. It is used as paper,
and answers all the purposes of post and
foolscap.

The ancient Egyptians used, as all the
world knows, that famous reed, the Cyperus
Papyrus with which, in after-time, they
furnished Greece and Rome. The papyrus was