bject to obtain an accession of power in the printing press, and at the same time a diminution of labour, and au equable application of force. This is in great measure accomplished by the press invented by earl Stanhope, and of which we have given an elevation in the upper part of pl. 145. In the common press, the perfect plane in the table and platten has long been a desideratum, which in the Stanhope press is completely supplied. Here the cheeks, the cap, and the winter, of the old press, are not required. In this press the platten is fixed to the hose, or apparatus, through which the screw works: and it is suspended to the short arm by a lever, provided with a counterbalancing weight, by which the form is released from the platten, at the return of the bar after the pull. For the stone is substituted a cast iron block which has its upper surface made accurately flat, and is laid correctly horizontal; this, with the provision made for a vertical pressure on the platten, and the care taken to set its lower face parallel to the surface of the block, ensures a uniform pressure on the form. For a minute description of this ingenious press, illustrated by drawings of the minuter parts, we beg to refer the reader to Mr. Stower's interesting work, the Printer's Grammar, where also may be seen a perspicuous account of another printing press, invented by Mr. Brooke.

PRINTING PRESS for copper plate printing, or, as it is usually termed, for rolling press printing, is employed in taking off prints or impressions from copperplates engraven, etched, or scraped, as in mezzotintos. See ENGRAVING.

:

This art is said to have been as ancient as the year 1540, and to owe its origin to Finiguerra, a Florentine goldsmith, who pouring some melted brimstone on au engraven plate, found the exact impression of the engraving left in the cold brimstone, marked with black taken out of the strokes by the liquid sulphur upon this, he attempted to do the same on silver plates with wet paper, by rolling it smoothly with a roller; and this succeeded; but this art was not used in England till the reign of king James I. when it was brought from Antwerp by Spe d. The form of the rolling-press, the composition of the ink used therein, and the manner of applying both in taking off prints, are as follows:

The rolling-press AL, fig. 15. pl. 144. may be divided into two parts, the body and carriage: the body consists of two wooden cheeks PP, placed perpendicularly on a stand or foot LM, which sustains the whole press. From the foot likewise are four other perpendicular pieces, c, c, c, c, joined by other cross or horizontal ones, d, d, a, which serve to sustain a smooth even plank or table HIK, about four feet and a half long, two feet and a half broad, and an inch and a half thick. Into the cheeks go two wooden cylinders or rollers, DE, FG, about six inches in diameter, borne up at each end by the cheeks, whose ends, which are lessened to about two inches diameter, and called trunnions, turn in the cheeks about two pieces of wood in form of half-inoons, lined with polished iron to facilitate the motion. Lastly, to one of the trunnions of the upper roller is fastened a cross, consisting of two levers AB, or pieces of wood, traversing each other, the arms of which cross serve instead of the bar or handle of the letter-press, by turning the upper roller, and wher. the plank is between the two rollers, giving the same motion to the under one, by drawing the plank forward and backward.

The ink used for copperplates is a composition made of the stones of peaches and apricots, the bones of sheep and ivory, all well burnt, and called Frankfort back, mixed with nut-oil that has been wel boiled, and ground together on a marble, after the same manner as painters do their colours.

The method of printing from copperplates is as follows: They take a small quantity of this ink on a rubber made of linen-rags, strongly bound about each other, and therewith smear the whole face of the plate as it lies on a grate over a charcoal fire. The plate being sufficiently inked, they first wipe it over with a foul rag, then with the palm of their left hand, and then with that of the right; and to dry the hand and forward the wiping, they rub it from time to time in whiting. In wiping the plate perfectly clean, yet without taking the ink out of the engraving, the address of the workman consists. The plate thus prepared, is laid on the plank of the press; over the plate is laid the paper, first well moistened, to receive the impression; and over the paper two or three folds of flannel. Things thus disposed, the arms of the cross are pulled, and by that means the plate with its furniture passed through between the rollers, which pinching very strongly, yet equally, press the moistened paper into the strokes of the engraving, whence it licks out the ink.

PRINTING MACHINE for numbering bank notes. This is a most ingenious invention of Mr. Bramah's, recently adopted by the bank of England, for filling up the dates and numbers of their notes; which when printed from the copperplates have blanks left for the dates and numbers. These were formerly inserted in writing, for each note being different, in these particulars, did not admit of being printed, until Mr. Bramah produced bis machine, which is a small priating press, provided with such mechanism as to change its types every time after an impression has been taken. Thus after having printed the note No. 1. it will at the next impression which is made have its type changed to No. 2, and so on.

Plate 143. contains a drawing of this machine; fig. 1. shewing it in perspective, as it appears with a bank note in it, prepared for having the numbers printed thereon. The note is placed against a flat tablet of brass, AA, its situation being determined by two fine pins fixed in the table, which are made to penetrate the paper at two small dots, printed upon it by the copper plate which printed the words of the note, as shown in the drawing; and it is confined in its position against the tablet by a piece of vellum B, stretched in a brass frame, connected by hinges a a to the tablet AA on which it folds down, enclosing the note as it were in a book: the velium has openings cut through it, at the places where the machine is to print upon the note. These are, the number twice repeated, which is to be printed first in large characters over the words of the first line I promise, and again over the words or bearer, at the end of the first line; as for instance

Το

EFG, containing the mechanism; by which the types for the figures are shifted every time after an impression has been taken from them; which is done by bringing the flat table A having the note attached to it, down upon the types (previously inked) by the handle H, which, as well as the tablet, moves on an axis II, supported in two ears projecting from the sides of the iron box. The tablet is attached to this axis by means of screws (as shewn in fig. 3.), which admit of adjusting it in any direction so that it will fall perfectly flat upon the type, and print with equal pressure in all parts of the note. An impression being thus taken, on lifting up the handle H to take out the note, the types of the number are shifted by the mechanism in order to print the succeeding number. explain the manner of effecting this we must refer to g. 2, which is a plan of the wheelwork contained in the box detached from the frame. Here LL are two clusters of brass circles, consisting of 5 in each, placed close together, and connected by a strong spindle M passing through the centres of them all, and upon which they ali revolve freely. Each circle, as shewn in fig. 3. has its circumference divided into 11 cogs, and in each cog a space is cut to receive a type n n, which are arranged round the cogs in a series of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, and a blank; and as the circles turn round independent of each other, any combination of figures may be made by then, which is less than No. 99,999, beyond which number the bank notes have not extended. The circles are turned round on their central axis by means of wheels OP fixed on an axis Q Q, extending across the frame of the machine. These wheels have 11 teeth, which operate between the teeth of the circle L as shewn in fig. 3 to turn them round, but without touching the types. The axis Q receives its motion by means of a wheel R, similar to O and P, fixed upon the middle of it, which is acted upon by a detent f, fig. 3. moving with the axis I, which every time the handle is raised up into the position of the view fig. 1, intercepts a tooth of the wheel R and moves it forwards. This by the same movement advances the circles L one tooth, and brings up a succeeding type through the aperture in the brass plate D. The wheels upon the axis Q are so narrow upon the edge as to engage only one of the circles L at the same time, and are at such a distance asunder upon their axis as to engage the same circle of each cluster at one time: the axis can be shifted endways in its bearings to operate with any one of the five circles in each cluster, and can be retained, in any position, by a semicircular clip, which enters into circular grooves formed round the spindle, of which there are 5 (as W, fig. 1.), one corresponding with each of the circles. The shifting is performed by a knob at the end of the spindle, as shewn at Q, fig. 1.

The circles have all a tendency to assume the position in which the types are proper for printing, that is, with their upper surface parallel to the brass plate D, by means of a small pin fitted into the axis M, and having a constant pressure outwards by a spiral spring. This pin comes to rest in an angular notch, made within side the circle opposite each type, as shown by the dark shaded parts in fig. 3; and each circle is provided with

one.

The machine is used in this manner: suppose the circles turned round to set their types so that all the blanks are upwards, except the first circle at the right hand side of each cluster. These present the figure 1: the type for No. and the date, being

cast in stereotype, are pinned down upon the brass plate D at c, c, and the date piece is changed every day. The spindle of Q is set for its weis to work in the teeth of these right hand cires. A note is now put on the tablet, the types inked with a printer's ball, and an impression taken; in lifting up the handle, the detent / at the back of its axis seizes a tooth of the wheel R, and by turn:az it round advances the two right hand circles of each cluster, so as to bring up No. 2. Another note is now printed, then No. 3 and so on, til No. is printed, and 0 brought up, after wh. a the handle is brought down twice, without printing any note. This brings up the blank space and No. 1. The axis is now shifted by its knob Q, áz. 1. to act upon the second circle from the right hand, and one motion of the handle being made brings up 0 of the second circle, making 01 °N which when printed (types being always in reverse) will be No. 10. The ûrst circle which before was units is now become tens, and the second units, which shifts at every impression to 11, 12, &c. up to 19, and after printing this the 0 comes tip, making 10. The first circle is then pushed xwards by the printer with a small wooden skewer, and 2 in the first circle brought up, making 20. Is this manner it proceeds to 99, the machine aittiing itself at every unit, but requires to be set of hand to advance for every ten. When 109 is to be printed, the axis is shifted to the 3d circle which becomes units, the 21 tens, and the East hundreds. The printing then proceeds as beft, the units being advanced by the machine, bat ti z tens and hundreds as often as they require it being advanced by hand. At 1000 the axis is shifted to the 4th circle, and the denomination of each s changed by this becoming the unit; 3 circles must now be moved by hand. On arriving at 10,000 the 5th circle must be made unit by shifting the axis to it, and the 4 first are moved won necessary by hand and in this manner the machine will print up to 99,999, which is 103,00 wanting 1.

The machines in actual use at the bank of Eagland, which are 40 in number, differ from our drawing in having two systems of circles, and a tablet of double length, for printing two notes at the same time; because the copper plates are of double size, and print two notes at esce on the same paper, which i afterwards cut in

two.

By these machines the labour of filling up the notes is reduced to less than of what it was before their introduction, when one clerk was expected to fill up in writing 400 notes per dir, whereas by one of the machines he can p 1300 double notes, which is equal to 2500 sing ones.

PRINTLESS. a. (from print.) That leaves no impression (Milton).

PRIONUS, in the entomology of Fabricius, a tribe of the coleopterous genus CERANBYX, which see.

PRIOR. a. (prior, Lat.) Former; being before something else; antecedent; anterior. PRIOR. S. (prieur, French.) The head of a convent of monks, inferiour in dignity to an abbot (Addison).

PRIOR ANNULARIS. (musculus prior exAn internal interosse nularis.) In anatomy. ous muscle of the hand. See INTEROSSET MANUS.

PRIOR INDICIS. (musculus prior medii.) Extensor tertii internodii indicis of Douglas. An internal interosseal muscle of the hand, which draws the fore finger inwards towards the thumb, and extends it obliquely.

P. MEDII. (Musculus prior medii.) An external interosscus muscle of the hand. See IN

TEROSSFI MANUS.

PRIOR (Matthew), an elegant and celebrated English poet, was the son of Mr. George Prior, a citizen and joiner of London, where he was born in 1664. His father dying wile he was young, he was left to the care of his uncle, a vintner, who behaved to him with the tenderness of a parent. He had him educated at Westminster-school, after which he took him hoe, intending to bring him up to his own bustness. But he still prosecuted the study of the classics at his leisure hours, and particularly his favourite, Horace; by which means he was soon taken notice of by the polite company who resorted to his uncle's house. One day, as the earl of Dorset, with several other persous of rank, were at this tavern, the discourse turned upon the Odes of Horace, and the company being divided in their opinions about a passage in that poet, one of the gentlemen said, We are not like to agree in our criticisins, but if I am not mistaken, there is a young fellow in the house who is able to set us all right:" upon which he named Mr. Prior, who was immediately sent for, and desired to give his opinion of Horace's meaning in the ode under debate. This he did with great modesty, and so much to the satisfaction of the company, that the earl of Dorset determined to remove him to a more agreeable station; and accordingly had him sent to St. John's college in Cambridge, where he at length became fellow of that college. He there contracted an intimate friendship with Charles Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax, in conjunction with whom he wrote a very humorous piece, intitled the Hind and the Panther transversed to the story of the Country Monse and City Mouse, in answer to Mr. Dryden's poem called the Hind and Panther. Upon the revolution, Mr. Prior was brought to court by the earl of Dorset, and in 1690 was made secretary to the earl of Berkeley, plenipotentiary for king William and queen Mary, at the congress at the Hague; and afterwards appointed secretary to the earls of Pembroke and Jersey, and sir William Williamson, ambassadors and plenipotentiaries at the treaty of Ryswick in 1697; as he was likewise in 1698 to the earl of Portland, ambassador to the court of France. While he was in that kingdom, one of the of ficers of the French king's household, shewing him the royal apartments at Versailles, and particularly the paintings of Le Brun, in which are represented the victories of Lewis XIV. asked him whether king William's actions were also to be seen in his palace?" No, Sir," answered Mr. Prior, "the monuments of my master's actions are to be seen every where but in his own house." In 1697 he was made secretary of state for Ireland, and in 1700 was ap

pointed one of the lords commissioners of trade and plantations, and was chosen member of parliament for East Grinstead in Sussex. In 1711 he was made one of the commissioners of customs, and sent minister plenipotentiary into France, for negotiating a peace with that kingdom: but the year after Geo. I. came to the throne he was recalled from France, and upon his arrival was taken up by a warrant from the house of commons, and soon after strictly examined by a committee of the privy-council. Robert Walpole, esq. then moved the house of commous for an impeachment ag dust him, and he was orderd into custody: but though he was one of the persons excepted out of the act of grace which passed in 1717, he was at the close of that year discharged from his confinement; upon which he spent the remainder of his days in tranquillity and retirement, chiefly at his estate at Downhall in Essex. He died at the earl of Oxford's seat at Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, the 18th of September, 1721, and was interred in Westminster abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory. The following is the epitaph he wrote for himself:

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave,

Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve:

Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher." PRIORIES (Alien), were cells of religious houses in England which belonged to foreign monasteries: for when manors or tithes were given to foreign convents, the monks, either to increase their own rule, or rather to have faithful stewards of their revenues, built a small convent here for the reception of such a number as they thought proper, and constituted priors over them. Within these cells there was the same distinction as in those priories which were cells subordinate to some great abbey; some of these were conventual, and, having priors of their own choosing, thereby became entire societies within themselves, and received the revenues belonging to their several houses for their own use and benefit, paying only the ancient apport, acknowledgment, or obvention, at first the surplusage, to the foreign house; but others depended entirely on the foreign houses, who appointed and removed their priors at pleasure. These transmitted all their revenues to the foreign head houses; for which reason their estates were generally seized to carry on the wars between England and France, and restored to them again on return of peace. These alien priories were most of them founded by such as had foreign abbeys founded by themselves or by some of their family.

The whole number is not exactly ascertained; the Monasticon has given a list of 100: Weever, p. 338, says 110.

They were all dissolved by act of parliament 2 Henry V. and all their estates vested in the crown, except some lands granted to the college of Fotheringhay. The act of dissolution is not printed in the statute books, but it is to

be found entire in Rymer's Foedera, ix. 283. and in the Parliament Rolls, vol. iv. p. 22. In general, these lands were appropriated to religious uses. Henry VI. endowed his foundations at Eton and Cambridge with the lands of the alien priories, in pursuance of his father's design to appropriate them all to a noble college at Oxford. Others were granted in fee to the prelates, nobility, or private persons. Such as remained in the crown were granted by Henry VI. 1440, to archbishop Chichley, &c. and they became part of his and the royal foun

dations.

PRIORESS. s. (from prior.) A lady superiour of a convent of nuns.

PRIORITY. s. (from prior, adjective.) 1. The state of being first; precedence in time (Hayward). 2. Precedence in place (Shak.). PRIORSHIP. s. (from prior.) The state or office of prior.

PRIORY. s. (from prior.) A covenant in dignity below an abbey (Shakspeare).

PRI'SAGE. s. (from prise.) A custom, now called butlerage, whereby the prince challenges out of every bark loaden with wine, two tuns of wine at his price (Cowell).

PRISCIANUS, an eminent grammarian of Cæsarea, flourished at Constantinople about 525. Laurentius Valla calls Priscian, Donatus, and Servius, the "triumviri in re gram. matica;" and a person who writes false Latin is proverbially said "to break Priscian's head." PRISM, in geometry, is a body, or solid, whose two ends are any plain figures which are parallel, equal, and similar; and its sides counecting those ends, are parallelograins. Hence, every section parallel to the ends, is the same kind of equal and similar figure as the ends themselves are; and the prism may be considered as generated by the parallel motion of this plane figure.

Prisms take their several particular names from the figure of their ends. Thus, when the end is a triangle, it is a triangular prism; when a square, a square prism; when a pentagon, a pentagonal prism; when a hexagon, a hexagonal prism; and so on. And hence the denomination prism comprises also the cube and parallelopipedon, the former being a square prism, and the latter a rectangular one. And even a cylinder may be considered as a round prism, or one that has an infinite number of sides. Also a prism is said to be regular or irregular according as the figure of its end is a regular or an irregular polygon.

The axis of a prism, is the line conceived to be drawn lengthways through the middle of it, connecting the centre of one end with that of the other end.

Prisms, again, are either right or oblique. A right prism is that whose sides, and its axis, are perpendicular to its ends; like an upright tower. And

An oblique prism, is when the axis and sides are oblique to the ends; so that, when set upon one end, it inclines on one hand, like an inclined tower.

.

The principal properties of prisms are,

1. That all prisms are to one another in the ratio compounded of their bases and heights. 2. Similar prisms are to one another in the triplicate ratio of their like sides.

3. A prism is triple of a pyramid of equal base and height; and the solid content of a prism is found by multiplying the base by the perpendicular height.

4. The upright, surface of a right prism is equal to a rectangle of the same height, and its breadth equal to the perimeter of the base or end. And therefore such upright surface of a right prism is found by multiplying the perime ter of the base by the perpendicular height. Also the upright surface of an oblique prism is found by computing those of all its parallelogram sides separately, and adding them to gether.

And if to the upright surface be added the areas of the two ends, the sum will be the whole surface of the prism:

PRISM, in dioptrics, is a piece of glass is form of a triangular prism: which is muc used in experiments concerning the nature of light and colours. See COLOUR.

PRISMATIC. a. (prismatique, Fr. from prism.) Formed as a prism (Pope). PRISMATICALLY, ad. (from prismatic. In the form of a prism (Boyle).

PRISMO'ID. s. (ique and neos.) A hod▼ approaching to the form of a prism, having is ends parallel but unlike plane figures of the same number of sides.

PRISON, a gaol, or place of confinement. See GAOL. Lord Coke observes, that a prison. is only a place of safe custody, salva custodia, not a place of punishment. Any place where a person is confined may be said to be a prisen and when a process is issued against one, be must, when arrested thereon, either be committed to prison, or be bound in a recognizance with sureties, or else give bail, according to the nature of the case, to appear at a certain day in court, there to make answer to what is alleged against him. When a person is taken and será to prison in a civil case, he may be released by the plaintiff in the suit; but if it is for treason or felony, he may not regularly be discharged until he is indicted of the fact and acquitted.

The good policy of imprisonment for debt he been frequently called in question (probably by those who were most in danger of suffering from it). We are of opinion, however, that it is in the whole productive of salutary conse quences in a state, and the terror of a gaol is is many cases an useful moral restraint. The fol lowing paper, however, set forth by the lak ble society for the discharge and relief of pers sons imprisoned for small debts, will excite va rious reflections in different readers; and with out any comment we submit it as a curisas document to the statesman, or political arithme tician, as throwing some light on the manner and character of the age.

The following is a summary view of the m ney annually expended by the socie.y for the