engraved letters on clay. I mean the Babylonian bricks, supposed to be
four thousand years old, mostly sun-baked, but some apparently kiln-burnt
almost to vitrification. Of these there are now many examples in England,
added to our stores by the indefatigable researches of Layard, Rawlinson,
and others. These bricks, which are about a foot square and three inches
thick, are on one side covered with hieroglyphics, evidently impressed
with a stamp, just as letters are now stamped on official papers.

Another evidence of the same kind, and of about the same age, is the
famous Babylonian cylinder found in the ruins of Persepolis, and now
preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is about
seven inches high, barrel-shaped, and covered with inscriptions in the
cuneiform character, disposed in vertical lines, and affording a positive
example of an indented surface produced by mechanical impression. Such
cylinders are supposed to have been memorials of matters of national or
family importance, and were in early ages, as we know by tradition, very
numerous. Stamped or printed blocks of lead, bearing the names of Roman
authorities, are to be found in the British Museum.

Printing on leather was practised by the Egyptians, as we discover from
their mummies, which have bandages of leather round their heads, with the
name of the deceased printed on them. And in Pompeii a loaf was found on
which the name of the baker and its quality were printed. Among ancient
testimonies, one of the most interesting is that afforded by Cicero in
his _de Natura Deorum_. He orders types to be made of metal, and calls
them _forma literarum_--the very words used by our first printers; and in
another place he gives a hint of separate cut letters when he speaks of
the impossibility of the most ingenious man throwing the twenty-four
letters of the alphabet together by chance, and thus producing the famous
_Annals_ of Ennius. He makes that observation in opposition to the