passed his youth in the city of Mentz. He there became implicated in an insurrection of the citizens against the nobility, and, to avoid the vengeance of his adversaries, fled to Strazburg. Here, for a long while, he pursued those mechanical employments for which his genius seems to have been peculiarly adapted; and it was in this city that he first made his great discovery. At that time, one of the most popular sources of amusement was playing cards. The demand for these toys led to inventions by which they could be rapidly multiplied, at a cheap rate. In Guttemberg's time, the usual method was that called stenciling; where a card or thin sheet of metal, pierced with the device to be represented, was laid on paper, and rubbed with a brush containing some kind of color. This crude method gave rise to a neater, on which may be said to have been founded the discovery of wood engraving. The required figure was outlined on the smooth surface of a piece of wood, which was afterwards cut away so as to leave only the lines in relief. This made rapid progress. Afterwards the printing was effected in the same manner that wood engravers now take proofs-that is, by blacking the block, placing one side of the paper upon it, and then rubbing the other side with some smooth surface. Pictures of saints, and representations of the legends of the church, were executed in a series of blocks, and bound up into a book -thus forming another step in the grand process of modern printing. One of these was called the Biblia Pauperum, on each of the blocks of which a passage of Scripture, or some other illustrative sentence, was appended-the whole cut out of solid block.

All this process of gradual improvement Guttemberg had been watching with the eye of genius. He first occupied himself in cutting block-letters, and afterwards sawed them from the block, so as to combine them into different words. The application of this fortunate idea was the birth of printing; but, simple as appears the

process of separating the letters from the blocks after they have once been engraved, it took ten years of study, anxiety, and laborious application to find it out.

About the year 1437, Guttemberg engaged with Andrew Drizehen, and two other wealthy citizens of Strazburg, to make a series of experiments preparatory to his great attempt to reveal his discovery to the world. Little is known of their labors. In 1439, Drizehen was dead; the money risked by the company was expended; Guttemberg's hard-earned savings were exhausted, and yet it appears that nothing had been practically effected to supersede the labors of the copiers. From this time until his return to Mentz, we hear little of Guttemberg, except that he continued to struggle with many difficulties, and made little progress in his discovery.

In the year 1445-6, Guttemberg returned to Mentz, bent on no longer delaying the prosecution of his discovery. The secret communicated to Andrew Drizehen, of Strazburg, had died with him; such knowledge of it as his nameless colleagues had obtained, was probably no longer regarded by him as worthy of a thought. In Guttemberg's breast alone it lived as a secret, pregnant with high results, as a lamp trimmed and ready for the torch to be applied, that it might enlighten and illume. That torch, however, is the same wealth that has been partially tried at Strazburg. Others must be introduced to the same secret, and new wealth be expended on the work, ere either the inventor or the world shall reap the reward of all their anxious years of sacrifice and toil. Alas, the world has little regard for its original inventors, little generosity to spare for their reward. Other men were to enter into his labors; and injustice, and many slights, and fresh exile, were to be the return to Guttemberg for the results of a lifetime. The world, however, was to be the gainer; let us hope that at least its brave benefactor had courage left to look into the

future, and, as he saw the far-stretching influences of his discovery, and dimly traced its mighty workings on the destiny of man, rejoiced in the blessings that were born of it, and exclaimed-"This work is mine!"

John Fust, an opulent citizen of Mentz, and a goldsmith by trade, was the person to whom Guttemberg applied, soon after his return to the city of his early adoption. Assistance must be had, if he was ever to bring into practical use the discovery he had been so long maturing. He showed his judgment in the choice of a confederate. Fust proved a man of energy, perseverance, and zeal, sufficient to carry out the important task confided to him; if, in other respects, he failed, there may have been causes which might account for this, of which we are now ignorant. To him, therefore, Guttemberg disclosed his secret, and the progress he had already made; and, having opened his mind fully to him, he readily engaged to co-operate, by furnishing the needful advances.

John Fust does not appear to have had any greater share in the discovery of printing, than that of advancing the necessary funds to carry it out, and readily entering into the project of the inventor. To his vigorous energy and perseverance, indeed, much is due. Yet his name has long occupied an unjust pre-eminence over that of the real inventor. As the utmost secrecy was long maintained by the first inventors of this art, so as to preserve its rewards to themselves, it was generally regarded with a mysterious curiosity, which was greatly aided by the superstitious credulity and ignorance of the period. It was part of the policy of its earliest practicers to encourage the idea that their printed works were produced singly, by the hand, like the missals and other manuscripts of the copiers. The works that first issued from the press were too costly and rare to be often so found as to admit of the comparison of different copies, yet

such was sure to happen, sooner or later, and then the astonishing fact of each exactly resembling the other, in every point, and dash, and turn, could not but excite astonishment. As their work went on, and copies were multiplied, the wonder only increased the more, and the conviction became a matter of popular belief, that Guttemberg and his associates were in league with the powers of darkness.

The peculiar prominence which the name of Fust has all along received in connection with the early history of this mysterious art, may, we think, be to a considerable extent accounted for, from his being confounded with the no less celebrated Dr. Faustus, whose learning and scientific knowledge, and perhaps also his pretensions to magic, which were so common among the students of science at that period, early rendered him a special object of mysterious regard among the Germans. The interest which attaches to these mysterious legends has been materially enhanced, of late years, by the fine poetic fancy and dramatic power that have been infused into this popular myth by successive writers of genius, and more especially by the wonderful work of Goethe, which has been again and again translated into English. The same popular belief was entertained at an early period in regard to the German scholar, and the goldsmith and printer of Mentz. Both were believed to be in league with the devil, and to have his agency at their command whenever they desired to accomplish any superhuman task. In this way it was believed that the early manuscripts were multiplied, and that Fust or Guttemberg had nothing more to do than to summon some of the attendant imps of darkness to obey their behest, and so have any number of copies of a manuscript that they pleased. A curious relic of this early superstition is still preserved in the popular name of printer's devils, by which the errand boys of the press are designated.

The end, however, to which the agency they employed was imme

diately to be directed, was sufficient to have satisfied the most ignorant of their superstitious traducers that the powers of darkness had no hand in the novel work. It was a discovery, indeed, pregnant with more certainty of overthrow and destruction to the emissaries of evil, whether earthly or spiritual, than any disclosures that had been made to man for fourteen centuries before. The proclamation of the accomplishment of the Gospel plan, by the Apostles of Christ, alone surpassed it in value, and its first work was the proclaiming anew of the same glad tidings to mankind.

Guttemberg and Fust got their partnership agreed upon at last. Their fonts were completed, their presses were ready, and all things prepared for the practical demonstration of what they were capable of accomplishing. "At last, therefore," says the historian of the English Bible, "between the years 1450 and 1455, for it has no date, their first great work was finished. This was no other than the Bible itself— the Latin Bible." Altogether unknown to the rest of the world, this was what had been doing at Mentz, in the West, when Constantinople, in the East, was storming, and the Italian brief men, or copyists, were so very busy with their pens. This Latin Bible, of six hundred and forty-one leaves, formed the first important specimen of printing with metal types. The very first homage was to be paid to that Sacred Volume which had been sacrilegiously buried, nay, interdicted so long; as if it had been, with pointing finger, to mark at once the greatest honor ever to be bestowed on the art, and infinitely the highest purpose to which it was erer to be applied. Nor was this all. Had it been a single page, or even an entire sheet, which was then produced, there might have been less occasion to have noticed it; but there was something in the whole character of the affair, which, if not unprecedented, rendered it singular in the usual current of human events. This Bible formed two volumes in folio, which have been justly praised for the strength and beauty of the paper, the exactness