ness of that language, he is doomed, find ample employment in meeting the demands of so vast, and, in many respects, so well-educated a nation.

Whether the art of printing spread from China westward, or sprung up in Europe spontaneously and independently, it is dificult, now, to decide. But, about the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, block-printing made its appearance on the Continent. Playing cards began to be printed from blocks, and also pictures of saints and of scenes from Scripture. In connection with these pictures, words were introduced, forming part of the block. These block books are interesting, as the rude germs of that printed literature which now covers the greater part of the earth. In these books we have the application of paper to the purposes of printing; and we have the multiplication of impressions, so that every person who chose might have a copy.

But the art was capable of something more; and in the former half of the fifteenth century, John Guttenberg, born in Mentz, of a noble family, about the year 1400, was inspired by a great thought, which, painfully and laboriously, he brought into practical action, and so made himself among the true monarchs of the world.

Hitherto, whatever words were printed formed a portion of a wooden block. The letters served one purpose, and one only. Guttenberg conceived the idea of forming separate letters-what we now call moveable types-capable of being used over and over again, and of printing words and books without number.

It was in Strasburg that he laboured to realize this idea; and wood was the material from which he first endeavoured to form his types. From year to year he toiled, impairing his estate, and harassed by partners whose aid he had accepted. They dragged him before courts of law; and, to

make peace, he taught them (being a man of many inventions) how to polish stones, and other secret arts, by which they might recover the moneys they had lost. Poor Guttenberg, also, amidst his other troubles, was called to account by a young lady for breach of promise of marriage. He had wooed an Alsatian maiden of honourable family, Ann of Irondom; and, perhaps because of his empty exchequer, he was slow to make her his wife. It is conjectured, however, that he ultimately fulfilled his engagement; for in after-years the name of "Ann Guttenberg occurs in a tax-book of Strasburg; and we may suppose that she was leading a life of some comfort and consolation, the tax which the widow paid being a toll upon wine.

From Strasburg, Guttenberg returned, in the year 1445, to his native city of Mentz, and there formed a partnership with Faust, a wealthy goldsmith-who, as a worker in metals and an engraver of letters, was a fitting ally of the ingenious deviser of moveable types. Types of metal were attempted; and another and important actor now comes upon the scene-Peter Schoeffer, the apprentice or servant of Faust, and subsequently his son-in-law. Schoeffer hit upon a device hardly inferior in importance to that of Guttenberg. He contrived a plan of casting types, and so superseding the laborious cutting of them. His process was this: He engraved a letter on a metal punch; this punch was struck into a hard metal; and a mould or matrix was thus formed, in which the types were cast. The art of printing was then, essentially, perfect.

The first, and, perhaps, the only book printed by Guttenberg in connection with Faust, was the Sacred Scriptures the edition now known as "The Mazarin Bible." "It is a very striking circumstance," says the historian of the literature of the middle ages, "that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried at the outset so bold a flight as the printing an

entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and radiant armour, ready, at the moment of her nativity, to subdue and destroy her enemies. ***We may see, in imagination, this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicating its first-fruits to the service of Heaven."

Guttenberg, the inventor of the art, was no more fortunate at Mentz than at Strasburg in his partnership. He and Faust quarrelled and parted; and the Mentz printing office was thenceforward conducted by Faust and the apprentice to whom he gave his daughter in marriage.

History has cast on Faust the charge of selfishness and illiberality; and the imputation may be true. Yet we may well understand how a sober, prosperous tradesman, anxious to reap a fair per centage on his investments, might sever himself from so unworldly and uncongenial a fellow-labourer as John Guttenberg, and be no more mercenary or narrow-minded than the majority of mankind.

Not, however, Faust the tradesman, but Guttenberg the inventor, must ever possess our sympathies. The patience, the perseverance, the pregnant ingenuity, and the heroic self-sacrifice of the noble and learned German, and the glorious fruits which they have borne, demand our homage and our gratitude. He was one of those rare and pure spirits who seek no sordid reward for their labours, but are continually pressing onward to greater and greater perfection -not pausing to gather emolument from the conquests with which they enrich the world—a world for which they were made, but which was not made for them.

It was midway in the fifteenth century that Guttenberg and Faust parted company. Faust and his son-in-law continued the practice of the new art, re

printing the Bible, and producing other works, down to the year 1462-in which year the Mentz was still almost the only printing office. But this primitive community of printers was now to be dispersed. Mentz was the seat of an archbishopric. The see fell vacant, and the clergy fell out. There were two candidates for the mitre. The Dean and Chapter preferred one-the Pope the other. The first got possession-the second, Adolphus, Count of Nassau, took arms to make good his claim. He laid siege to Mentz―stormed and took the city-and the inhabitants were slain, plundered, scattered. The printers -of whom little note was taken by the rival prelates, but who, really, were playing the most important part in the Providential drama-the printers fled, with their presses and types, and dispersed themselves over Europe. The practice of the new art was more widely diffused; and before the end of the fifteenth century, Italy, Holland, Spain, Bohemia, France, had all produced printed editions of the Bible. Everywhere, in its infancy, the press was welcomed. It was set up in cities and in monasteries. The Pope was its patron in Rome. The King of France himself sent an engraver from his mint to learn the art, and introduce it to his capital; but civil commotions thwarted the royal will, and his agent set up his press in Venice instead.

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In the next century, 'printing," said Martin Luther, "is the best and highest gift, the summum et postremum donum, by which God advanceth the Gospel. It is the last flame which shines before the extinction of the world. Thanks to God that it hath come at last. Holy fathers, now at rest, have desired to see this day of the revealed Gospel."

The Saxon monk was a believer in the approaching end of the world-thought himself "the great trumpet which prefaced and announced the coming of our Lord," and that his ally, Guttenberg, was another herald of the great change. There is a sense

in which Luther was not wrong; for he and the printer destroyed the world, and made it anew.

While the press was in leading strings-while books were printed in the Latin tongue-while they took no part in the controversies of the age-the art of printing was patronized by the powerful. But in the sixteenth century, Tyndale, who had printed the New Testament in English, was strangled and burnt on the Continent; and in our own country, the author and publisher of a tract offensive to Queen Elizabeth were each admonished, by the loss of a hand, to be careful how they meddled with affairs of State.

It was in 1474, in the troubled reign of the fourth Edward, that William Caxton introduced the art into England, and, under the patronage of the Abbot, established his press in the abbey of Westminster. If we pass from the Abbot's printing office of the fifteenth century, to the Exhibition of the nineteenth, held in that part of the Abbot's manor which is known as Hyde Park, we may form some just estimate of the progress which this country and the world have made in the interval.

Most of us were visitors to the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in the never-to-be-forgotten Crystal Palace of 1851.

The first printing press, set up in the neighbouring abbey, was a clumsy implement, worked by a hand-screw in the manner of a clothes-press, and only capable of making some few score impressions per hour. We saw in the Crystal Palace a printing machine yielding eight thousand impressions in the hour.

In Caxton's day, no paper was made in England. Our countrymen imported their supplies from the Continent. The sheets were then, and down to the close of the last century, made by hand, and were of small size. We saw in Hyde Park a sheet of paper two miles long, made in a machine which receives the soft pulp at one end, and discharges it in the form of beautiful paper at the other,