250 Substitution of the Roman [No. 8, new series. 



ingenuity of foreign printers, but they cannot be compressed any 

 further without seriously endangering legibility. 



Supposing the Roman characters to have come into general use, 

 every variety of English type, down to the smallest, would be im- 

 mediately available for printing vernacular books ; and cheapness 

 and legibility, instead of being antagonistic qualities, as at present, 

 would go hand in hand. 



One advantage of the change would be that printers would be 

 able to introduce all English improvements, to give their books a 

 more inviting appearance, and to suit the taste of the public, or 

 rather, to create a taste, by the use of a greater variety of styles 

 than is practicable at present. Another advantage, and a still more 

 important one in a populous, poor country like India, would be 

 that it would cheapen printing to an enormous extent. The dif- 

 ference in size and price between English books and books printed 

 in the vernaculars is chiefly owing to the difference of type. The 

 best means of forming an accurate comparative estimate will be to 

 take some book which has been translated as closely as possible 

 from English into one of the vernacular tongues, and to compare 

 its price in the two languages. Compare, for instance, the English 

 Bible with the Tamil Bible. I recently received a grant from the 

 Madras Auxiliary Bible Society of several hundreds of copies of 

 their " Jubilee edition" of the Tamil Bible. This Bible is one of 

 the clearest, neatest, compactest, cheapest specimens of Tamil ty- 

 pography which I have yet seen, and we are indebted for it, as for 

 almost all improvements in Tamil printing, to Mr. Hunt of the 

 American Mission Press. This Bible, which is one of Mr. Hunt's 

 triumphs, is of the size of an English "Family Bible," weighs five 

 pounds, and its price to non-subscribers, which is, I presume under, 

 rather than over, its cost price is Rs. 4-12 or Sh. 9-6. At the same 

 time, and from the same Society, I received a grant of some copies 

 of the English Bible, so that I was naturally led to draw a compa- 

 rison between them. The edition of the English Bible which was 

 sent to me was published for distribution amongst the labouring 

 classes in England, and seems to me to be printed in a sufficiently 

 clear type, and to be neatly enough got up, for general use in 

 schools in this country. It is too large to be called a " pocket 

 Bible," and would be just the size for general use among Hindu 



