Page:The Lord’s prayer in five hundred languages.pdf/12

This page has been proofread.

publication, offer also a practical side which commends itself to the consideration of a far wider circle of the community. The missionary, the manufacturer, the merchant, the traveller, in short, the pioneer of commerce and civilization, can approach foreign nations only through their own vernaculars, and, in the case of these being written in characters of their own, by using those characters. The great Religious Societies and kindred institutions, as well as the foremost merchants and exporters, have thus for many years past availed themselves with signal success of the extensive typographical resources of this firm. While in Russia, France, and Austria, the great Oriental Printing Establishments are largely subsidized by the respective Governments, Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington have, unaided, brought together a profusion of type of the most varied description and adapted to the printing of almost any Eastern tongue; and they deserve the recognition of the public at large for the material aid they have for a quarter of a century been rendering in furthering the intercourse between this country and the East.

R. Rost.