Great ideas float about in the world, seeking admission into minds suited, by genius and culture, for their reception; and hence it is that so many rival claims to inventions and discoveries prevail.

It was so with Printing-an invention commonly ascribed to the period of its application to the purposes of useful learning. That application, however, was made no more than four hundred years ago. The principle of the art is of far higher antiquity; and if we briefly trace its history, we shall see how true it is that inventions and discoveries, as has already more than once been stated, are of gradual growth, the progressive work of ages.

The art of printing-the multiplication of impressions from a stamp or mould-is as old as the world itself. When our first mother trod the virgin sands on the margin of the streams that watered the garden of Eden, ever as she moved she left, behind, the print of her fair foot. Here, on the very threshold of the world, was one of those pregnant hints which nature has ever since been continually offering to the mind of man. Why was it not accepted? Simply because the world had then no need of printing. Adam, by the side of Eve, was content with that limited practice of the art of which we read in Milton:

-"and press'd her matron lip with kisses pure."

As the earth, however, became more peopled, the art was applied, in a variety of ways, to the purposes of man-his pleasures, uses, conveniences.

The most ancient cities of the world, Babylon and Nineveh, erected on the Euphrates and the Tigris, where the human race had its birth, were built of bricks bearing stamped inscriptions, just as letters are now stamped on the surface of paper; and as we learn, from the remains which yet survive, that the Assyrians in their public buildings, at leaststamped every brick, it is evident that the art, in this form, was as common, three or four thousand

years ago, as is that of book-printing in our own day. The names of the dead, again, as their mummies inform us, were in Egypt printed with a stamp upon bandages of leather bound round the brows. Seals, for making impressions on wax and other substances, were in common use among the Greeks and Romans. The bread, and also the cheeses, of the Romans were stamped. A loaf was found in Pompeii on which was printed the name of the baker, and its quality. There is an obscure passage in Pliny which is supposed to imply that a mode was practised, in his day, of multiplying impressions of portraits. The principle of what we call the art of printing was employed, also, in branding criminals and cattle, and in marking common soldiers and the workmen who made arms. Long, too, before the Christian era, the art of coining, so analogous to that of printing, was practised in great perfection.

How comes it, then, that the ingenious and enterprising nations of antiquity, who made and multiplied impressions of words and objects, in clay, and wax, and metals, and various other substances-how came it that, possessing and prizing a literature, they were content with cumbrous and costly manuscripts?

The phenomenon has appeared, to some minds, so marvellous, not to say incredible, that they have taken refuge in the belief that the application of printing to letters was, in fact, perfectly understood by Greeks and Romans, but that their rulers divined the seditions and schisms which lurked in the art, and left it slumbering in the womb of Time. So, also, it has been asserted-but we none of us believe it that monkeys can speak, and only hold their tongues lest they should be made to work. The solution of the difficulty as to the art of printing, gives the ancients a superhuman sagacity which they did not possess. Such a discovery would never

have been made beforehand. The statesmen of the fifteenth century, civil and ecclesiastical, were acute

enough; yet they dreamt not of danger from the new art; or, in all probability, instead of nursing, they would have strangled the infant Hercules. The Press cast no shadows before it, to warn men in high places of their danger. It was not till absolute Power had tasted of its fruits, that it sought to cut down and root up this "tree of knowledge of good and evil." It was then, only, that rulers, like the worthy Governor of Virginia, anathematized printing. "I thank God," Sir William Berkeley devoutly exclaimed, "there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought heresy, and disobedience, and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both !"

It was very natural for a man of Sir William's turn of mind to offer up a prayer like this, in the seventeenth century, while the printing press was in full operation; and there will always be governors in the world to say to it "Amen!" But men of after-wit are not prophets, and we must look for some other explanation of the postponement to modern times of the alliance of learning and literature with printing. This explanation we shall find, mainly if not entirely, in the absence of a convenient material for receiving the impressions of letters or types.

An iron road, and a moving engine capable of drawing, at a great velocity, a load of almost any weight, made smooth the way for the introduction into this island of the truly-glorious revolution of a uniform penny postage; and the invention of the material which we call "paper," was the destined precursor of the multiplication of books by the art of printing.

In writing and recording, the ancients made use of nearly every conceivable variety of material, animal, mineral, and vegetable. Down to the ninth century, the article in common use, and which gives

its name to our "paper," was the papyrus of Egypt. The skins of animals, manufactured into parchment and vellum, were also extensively used-as they still are; but the supply was limited; they were sufficiently scarce and costly to tempt the erasure, or washing-out, of what was already written, that the material might be used again-a practice to which we owe the loss of many of the most precious writings of antiquity.

Papyrus, the material in ordinary use, was made by the Egyptians, who were large exporters to foreign countries. It was made from a plant growing on the banks of the Nile. The stem was torn into shreds; and these were laid side by side, and crosswise; so forming a small sheet; the whole being combined by moisture, size, and pressure.

Very

useful it was, and in such general demand that we are told by Cassiodorus it "covered all the desks of the world;" but it was not adapted for receiving impressions from stamps, like printing types.

The next advance in paper making was made, it would appear, by the Chinese, who devised a means of converting the stem of a plant into thin sheets, by unwinding it, as it were, from the circumference to the centre; and it is probable, (although the fact is disputed,) that we are indebted to the same ingenious people for the invention of paper made from pulp, such as we now use for writing and printing. As nearly as we may now ascertain, it was about the close of the first, or the commencement of the second century of our era, that the Chinese began to make paper from cotton, rags, and other substances, reduced to a pulp, and spread into thin layers to dry. Paper of this description, manufactured in the East, found its way into Europe through the commercial relations of Venice and other Italian ports. The Crusades-the subjugation of Egypt by the Saracens their arrival in Spain-and other causes, promoted the general introduction of the

new material; and, gradually, the papyrus of the Egyptians, the scarcity of which had been known to produce riots among the Greeks and Romans, was suffered to fall into disuse.

In course of time, Europe, from being an importer, became a manufacturer of paper. Papermills (of which we have now four hundred in these islands) were established in Spain in the twelfth century, and, by the fourteenth, all over Italy, Germany, and France.

We have now come down to a period in which the civilized world had made one of its greatest achievements-the possession, in any required quantity, of a white and smooth material, of the same thickness throughout, and equally adapted for the reception of written or printed characters. The application of the principle of the art of printing to the purposes of useful learning had become possible; and the application was made.

The controversy which belongs to the origin of the art, as now practised, is foreign to the purpose of this essay. The Chinese claim to be its inventors, and profess to have practised it from a remote antiquity. The latter pretence has no sufficient warrant for its support. It does appear, however, that long prior to the rise of the art in Europe, impressions were taken from blocks upon paper in China; and it is strikingly characteristic of the people of that country, that the mode in which they print their books is the same now as it was in the beginning. They still print almost wholly from blocks, seldom using moveable types; and they have no printing press-much less a printing machine. Books, nevertheless, are as cheap in China as with us, if not cheaper. The Chinese printer, indeed, has great advantages. He has a boundless market. He has three hundred millions of customers, who, if they do not speak, all read the same language; and his solid blocks, to which, by the comparative rude