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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 339, January, 1844 by Various
page 110 of 314 (35%)
requisite for the perusal of these lighter pages, is no longer
forthcoming. People are busy ballooning or driving; shooting like
stars along railroads; or migrating like swallows or wild-geese. It
has been found, within the current year, impossible to read even a
newspaper!

The march of intellect, however, luckily keeps pace with the
necessities of the times; and no sooner was it ascertained, that
reading-made-easy was difficult to accomplish, than a new art was
invented for the more ready transmission of ideas. The fallacy of the
proverb, that "those who run may read," being established, modern
science set about the adoption of a medium, available to those sons of
the century who are always on the run. Hence, the grand secret of
ILLUSTRATION.--Hence the new art of printing!

The pictorial printing-press is now your only wear! Every thing is
communicated by delineation. We are not _told_, but _shown_ how the
world is wagging. The magazines sketch us a lively article, the
newspapers vignette us, step by step, a royal tour. The beauties of
Shakspeare are imprinted on the minds of the rising generation, in
woodcuts; and the poetry of Byron engraver in their hearts, by means
of the graver. Not a boy in his teens has read a line of Don Quixote
or Gil Blas, though all have their adventures by heart; while
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" has been committed to memory by our
daughters and wives, in a series of exquisite illustrations. Every
body has La Fontaine by heart, thanks to the pencil of Granville,
which requires neither grammar nor dictionary to aid its
interpretations; and even Defoe--even the unparalleled Robinson
Crusoe--is devoured by our ingenuous youth in cuts and come again.

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