In this case, as in the Frankfort cut, the caster is sitting; but his mould, large as it is, appears to be furnished with a spring at the bottom, more like the later hand-moulds. In the lines accompanying Amman’s picture the founder is made to say that he casts types made of “Bismuth, Tin and Lead,” a statement which, if correct, shows that the Frankfort types of that day must have been cast in terribly soft metal, of about the substance and durability of modern solder. The presence of the crucibles, however, points to the use of some fourth metal, of sufficient hardness to require a violent heat to fuse it. The founder also states that he can correctly justify his letters, which may refer either to the dressing of the types after casting, or the more important justification of the matrix to adapt it to the mould. Another interesting memorial of a sixteenth century foundry is to be met with in a visit to the once famous printing-office of Christopher Plantin at Antwerp.[180] The foundry of the great Netherlands “Archi-typographus,” which is still preserved in its pristine condition, was on the upper floor of his house, and consisted of two rooms, one devoted wholly to the casting, the other being a store-room for types awaiting use at the press. In the casting-room is still to be seen a large brick furnace covered with an earthenware slab. To the right of this is a smaller furnace, surmounted by the metal pot, which even yet contains some of the old type-alloy. On the walls hang tongs, ladles, knives and moulds. In a box are preserved small parcels of pattern-types for setting the moulds by, among which the visitor is shown three or four types of silver.[181] In another box are a {107} large number of punches[182] and moulds of all sizes. A bench extends along one side of the room, doubtless for the use of the dressers or rubbers. In all these points we recognise that even in Plantin’s day the general appointments of a letter-foundry differed very little from those of the modern foundry before the introduction of machinery. Although we have no description of any English foundry before Moxon’s time, we know that the processes in use among us boast a much earlier origin. Moxon described no new method, but the old-established practice which had obtained, if not from the infancy of the art, at least from the commencement of that gradual divorce between printing and letter-founding which led, about 1585, to the establishment of foundries for the public use. We have no reason to suppose that the foundries connected with the presses of Day, Wolfe and others differed in practice from those of their Frankfort and Antwerp contemporaries, or that when, in 1597, Benjamin Sympson, a letter-founder, gave bond to the Stationers’ Company not to cast type for the printers without due notice, he, or the founders who followed him, knew any other methods of producing their type than those already familiar to every printer at home and abroad.