keeper, wherever he may be, to get the book he wants, if it be in stock; if not, a requisition is forwarded to the house in the Strand, and he gets it by the next day. He can get the book he wants with a great deal more certainty, and almost as quickly even in the North of England, than he could by sending to the next country town. If he is travelling, he may exchange his books at any station where he may happen to be.

The works purchased at the bookstall itself is not a bad barometer of the popular taste, as regards the sale of current books of the day. As we have said, there is but little demand for the more expensive works of the leading publishers, Messrs. Murray, Longman, &c., but a very large call for Parlour and Railway Libraries, shilling novels, and works under half a guinea. The demand for mere book-makers' productions has, however, quite passed away. Cheap editions of standard authors are in constant requisition. Dickens, Thackeray, Kingsley, and Tennyson, are very popular, and Anthony Trollope is coming up fast behind them. The publications of Charlotte Bronte and the authoress of "Adam Bede" have had an enormous run upon the railway. One of the most popular cheap books of the day-but only of the day-has been the "Detective Police Officer," reprinted from "Chambers's Journal." Of this work, at least 10,000 copies have been sold in a few months at the railway-bookstalls alone.

Perhaps the most cheering features in the demand for cheap editions of books, is the call for works of the character of "Self Help" and "Stephenson's Life." The success of these works has called forth a host of imitations, called "Men who have Risen," "Men in Earnest," "Men

run.

who have made themselves,' "Farmer's Boys," and others, all testifying to the love of energetic action among the population so different to that which obtains in centralized continental countries. For second-class poetry there is no demand whatever. Byron and Cowper remain popular, but Tennyson, Longfellow, and Hood, have the Cheap hand-books on farming and the farm-yard are bought largely. "Our Farm of Four Acres," for instance, was a grand success. We have tried to ascertain if any particular class of works is in demand in particular localities, but the only instance of this nature has reference to the county of Leicester, and other sporting counties, in which books about the horse, and about hunting and fishing, are constantly inquired after; and, singularly enough, the general demand increases on the publication of any particular book of merit upon these subjects. The didactic class of books stands no chance, and works of a theological character are seldom sold on the railway bookstalls; but of late, a very large demand has sprung up for a cheap Bible. The Bible Society some time since determined to offer for sale, at a loss, at their stalls, a well got-up neatly-bound Bible for one shilling. The success of this step was immediate. The sale has been going on at the rate of 2,000 copies a year, and is still increasing. It is no uncommon thing, we are informed, for employers of labour to take a large pocketful down into the country for the purpose of giving away to their work-people.

As we have shown, the railway-bookstalls find but few purchasers for first-class, high-priced books; but, singularly enough, it is now found that there is an almost

exclusive demand for them in the circulating library department of these stalls; the public are anxious enough to read them, but it cannot afford to pay such high prices for them; but those who may be anxious to buy at a reduced price have the opportunity of doing so after the books have been "well read," standing on the stalls as "second-hand" library books. Thus the institution of the circulating library has tapped-if we may make use of the expression—a class in the community which before made but little sign.

Amid the hum of the mighty Babylon, we easily overlook the noiseless and unostentatious growth of such an establishment as that of Messrs. W. H. Smith & Co. Within thirty-five years, by the exercise of intelligence, perseverance, and industry, this house has grown from a mere stationer's shop and newspaper agency, employing half-a-dozen persons, to a mighty establishment, employing two hundred clerks and five hundred men and boys; and whilst Mr. Smith has thus toiled to place himself in the position of a greater employer of labour, his efforts tend most powerfully to civilize and elevate the intelligence of the nation.

Along every line of rail which traverses the country in every direction, these libraries are posted, and become wells of English undefiled. They have established a propaganda of culture in the remotest as well as in the most cultivated spots on the island; and their proprietor, in building up his own fortune, is doing no small service towards the educational movement in this country.

THE SEWING-MACHINE.

It is the privilege of an advancing civilization that its constant tendency is to obliterate the evils its footsteps are constantly inflicting upon classes of the community. Hood's 'Song of the Shirt" gave utterance to such a cry of agony on the part of the poor sempstress, that we almost felt that progress was purchased at the price of too much individual suffering to be accepted as an unmitigated good. Whilst that song, however, was yet ringing in the ears of the public, a human agency was at work, toiling and moiling in obscurity, to obliterate the drudgery of the needle, and to lift the poor sempstress out of the slough of despond in which she had been so long prostrated. In the year 1846 Elias Howe, a mechanic of New York, working for his daily bread, took out a patent for the first successful Sewing-machine, and thus accomplished the last link of that chain of inventions which has emancipated the human hand from the direct fabrication of clothing of a textile character. The spinning-jenny and the stocking-machine have long since rendered obsolete the spinning-wheel and the knittingneedle, and now the sewing machine is in the fair way to render the common needle a curiosity. The idea of a Sewing-machine had long floated in men's minds. As

early as the beginning of this century, a machine for executing tambour-work was patented, and the elder Brunel made a machine early in his career for embroidering patterns on light muslins. Contrivances of different kinds continued to be patented for executing ornamental work, in some of which essential parts of the present sewing-machine, such as the shuttle, were used; indeed, mechanicians played about, and almost touched the final invention.

It was left, however, for American ingenuity to embody the floating idea in men's minds into a working every-day fact. Howe's machine of 1846 contains the leading features of the principal Sewing-machines of the present day. It does, indeed, seem a hard problem to solve, the construction of a machine, which shall rival the delicacy of manipulation of the human hand, and which shall perform all the various motions of the needle in perfecting the different stitches the clever sempstress has invented; but all these conditions have been fulfilled, and hemming, stitching, felling, and seaming, are now performed by the iron hand, that never grows tired, with marvellous speed and accuracy. There have been scores of patents taken out in America and England during the last fifteen years, but the leading features of all Sewingmachines are the same, namely, an iron arm to hold and give motion to the needle, which has an up and down thrusting motion, and which carries a continuous thread round off a reel or spool. The peculiarity of the needle is that its eye is near its point, the object being to thrust a loop of thread through the material to be sown; in order to secure this loop, and thus to make a firm