atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance.

We have besides, in what is generally classed as a manuscript, a
reasonable although disputed evidence of an elementary stage of printing;
I mean the _Codex Argenteus_ (or _Silver Book_) of Upsala, which contains
a portion of the gospels in Mesogothic, supposed to be of the fourth or
fifth century, the work of Ulfilas. In this codex the first lines of each
gospel and of the Lord's Prayer are in large gold letters, apparently
printed by a stamp, in the manner of a bookbinder, as there are
indentations on the back of the vellum. The small letters are written in
silver. The whole is on a light purple or violet colored vellum.

Having said enough, I think, of the ancients' knowledge of type-forms and
printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art
in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had
of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to
posterity.

But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the
Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in
most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised
block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago. Nor
does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of
more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But
they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed--seven
hundred sheets per hour--that, until the introduction of steam, they far
outstripped Europeans. Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the
emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the
art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture.