offspring, Art. All the great boons vouchsafed to man by a munificent
providence are of gradual development; and though some may appear to have
come upon us suddenly, reflection and inquiry will always show that they
have had their previous stages.

Indeed, nothing in this great world which concerns the well-being of man
takes place by accident, but is brought forward by divine will, precisely
at the moment most suitable to our condition. So it was with astronomy,
the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, gas, the electric telegraph, and
many other of those blessings which have progressed with civilization.
The elements were there and known, but the time had not arrived for their
fructification.

And so it is with printing: although its invention is placed in the
middle of the fifteenth century, and almost the very year fixed, this can
only be regarded as a matured stage of it. To illustrate this, I propose
to begin with a cursory view of its primitive elements, of which the very
first were no doubt initiative marks and numerals.

The use of numerals has been denominated "the foundation of all the arts
of life"; and we know with certainty that several nations, and among them
the Mexicans, had numerals before they were acquainted with letters. The
first method of reckoning was with the fingers, but small stones were
also used--hence the words "calculate" and "calculation," which are
derived from _calculus_, the Latin for a pebble-stone.

The Chinese counted for many years with notched sticks; and even in
England, in comparatively modern times, accounts were kept by tallies, in
which notches were cut alike in two parallel pieces of wood. Shakespeare
alludes to "the score and the tally" in his _Henry VI_; and this mode