418 JAMES WATT. 
source ; we must not leave them the power of saying that 
we have only cited o/d branches of industry. I will, 
therefore, now remark how much they were, not long 
since, deceived in their lugubrious forebodings relative to 
engraving on steel. A copper plate, they said, will not 
give above two thousand impressions. A steel plate, by 
yielding a hundred thousand without being worn, would 
replace fifty copper plates. Will not these numbers prove 
that the greater part of the former engravers (forty-nine 
out of fifty) will feel obliged-to abandon their profession, 
to change their graver for the trowel or the hoe, or beg 
charity in the public streets ? 
For the twentieth time, prophets of evil, be pleased 
not to forget in your lucubrations, the principal element 
of the problem which you undertake to solve! Think 
of the insatiable desire to be well off, that Nature has 
implanted in the human heart ; remember that one wish 
is no sooner satisfied, than it immediately gives rise to 
another wish; that our appetites of every sort increase 
with the cheapness of the objects adapted for their indul- 
gence, and to a degree that defies the creative powers of 
the most powerful machines. 
But to return to the engravings. An immense major- 
ity of the public did without them when they were dear ; 
their price decreases, and all the world seeks for them. 
They have become the necessary ornament of the best 
books ; to middling books they give some chance of sale. 
There are no almanacs even now, but what the old hid- 
eous figures of Nostradamus, by Matthew Laensberg, are 
replaced by picturesque views which, in a few seconds, 
transport our immovable citizens from the shores of the 
Ganges to those of the Amazon, from thé Himalayas to’ 
the Cordilleras, from Pekin to New York. Look also at 
Se <O 
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