emblazoned on the scroll of imperishable fame; be displayed for
ever on the highest pyramid of mind; and his country would receive
an additional beam of splendor to its previous blaze of renown.
But who, for a certainty, knows the inventor of printing? or the
country of its origin? Was it Holland in the person of Coster of
Haarlem? Or Germany in the person of Mentel, the nobleman, of
Strasburg? Or Guttenberg, the goldsmith, of Mayence? Was it
neither of these countries? or none of these men? And why this
uncertainty? Because a few men possessing the secret, which they
kept cautiously to themselves, of printing by means of movable
blocks of wood, preferred accumulating enormous sums, equivalent
to fair fortunes, by receiving five, six and even between seven
and eight hundred gold sequins from a King of France or a Pope of
Rome, a Cardinal or an Archbishop, for a bible, which, printed,
was passed off as written. We all know how the whole imposture
exploded, by the King of France and the Archbishop of Paris
comparing the bibles which they had bought of Faust during his
stay at the Soleil d'Or in the Rue St. Jacques, Paris. Each
thought his bible so superb that the whole world could not produce
such another for beauty,--the books being fine vellum copies of
what are now known as the Mazarin Bible;--and what was their
amazement on discovering, after a very close comparison, that
everything was exactly alike in the two copies,--the flower-pieces
in gold, green and blue, with grouped and single birds amid
tendrils and leaves, the illuminated letters at the beginning of
books with variegated embellishments and brilliant hues of scarlet
and azure, the crimson initials to each chapter and sentence,
along with astonishing and incomprehensible conformity in letters,
words, pagination and lines on every page.