and no matter how much I have talked and pointed out the wonderful
sights, and imparted useful information, known to me alone—only one
penny extra—think of it!

Yes, printing was first done at Mayence by a German, Gutenberg, about
sixty years ago. One of Gutenberg’s workmen went up to Nuremberg and
taught others how to design and cast type. This man, Alberto Durer,
helped them, designing the initials and making their title-pages by
cutting the design on a wood block, then covering this block with ink,
laying a sheet of paper upon it, placing it in a press, and then when
the paper is lifted off it looks exactly like the original drawing. In
fact, most people couldn’t tell the difference, and here you can print
thousands of them from the one block.

Bellini makes drawings for title-pages and initials for Aldus and
Nicholas Jenson. Venice is the greatest printing place in the world,
and yet the business began here only thirty years ago. The first book
printed here was in Fourteen Hundred Sixty-nine, by John of Speyer.
There are two hundred licensed printing-presses here, and it takes
usually four men to a press—two to set the type and get things ready,
and two to run the press. This does not count, of course, the men who
write the books, and those who make the type and cut the blocks from
which they print the pictures for the illustrations. At first, you
know, the books they printed in Venice had no title-pages, initials or
illustrations. My father was a printer and he remembers when the first
large initials were printed—before that the spaces were left blank and
the books were sent out to the monasteries to be completed by hand.

Gian and Gentile had a good deal to do about cutting the first blocks
for initials—they got the idea, I think, from Nuremberg. And now there