was a copy of Erasmus, "_Expurgatus iuxta censuram Academiæ Louaniæ an^o
79_." The name of the printer--which in the preceding Bible had been tried
to be _cancelled_--was here uniformly _erased_: but it was doubtless the
Basil edition of Erasmus by good old honest Froben and his sons-in-law.[38]

What think you of undoubted proofs of STEREOTYPE PRINTING in the middle of
the sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is,
that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types,
fixed and immoveable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and
introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon the
blocks. Professor May begged my acceptance of a specimen or two of the
types, thus fixed upon plates of the same metal. They rarely exceeded the
height of four or five lines of text, by about four or five inches in
length. I carried away, with his permission, two proofs (not long ago
pulled) of the same block containing this intermixture of stereotype and
block-wood printing.

I believe I have now told you all that appears worthy of being told, (as
far as my own opportunities of observation have led me) of the CITY OF
AUGSBOURG. I shall leave it (to-morrow) with regret; since a longer
residence would, I am persuaded, have introduced me to very pleasant
society, and made me acquainted with antiquities, of all kinds, well
deserving of _some_ record, however trivial. As it is, I must be content
with what the shortness of my time, and the more immediately pressing
nature of my pursuits, have brought me in contact. A sight of the
_Crucifixion by Hans Burgmair_, and the possession of the most genuine copy
of the _editio princeps of Horace_, have richly repaid all the toil and
expense of the journey from Stuttgart. The Horace, and the Protestant
Polish Bible of 1563, will be my travelling companions--at least as far as
_Munich_--from whence my next despatch will be dated.[39] I hope, indeed,