A similar discovery, equally valuable and interesting, was made not many months ago by the late Mr. Henry Bradshaw, of Cambridge, in a copy of a work entitled _De Laudibus Gloriosæ Virginis Mariæ_, _sine notâ_, but printed probably about 1468 at Cologne.[45] We are indebted to Mr. Bradshaw for the present opportunity of presenting for the first time the annexed facsimile of this curious relic, {25} photographed direct from the page on which it occurs.[46] These two impressions are particularly interesting in the light of the old Lyonnaise types still in existence. Like them, it will be seen they are without nick, and tapered off at the face. They are also without the jet-break. The height of both types (which is identical) is above the English standard, and more nearly approaches that of No. 2 of the Lyons letters; and M. Madden points out as remarkable that this height (24 millimètres) is exactly that fixed as the standard “height to paper” by the “réglement de la libraire” of 1723. The body of the types (assuming the letter to be laid sideways, of which there can be little doubt) is about the modern English, and so corresponds exactly to the body of the text on which it lies. The chief point of interest, however, is in the small circle appearing in both near the top, which M. Madden (as regards the type of the _Nider_) thus explains: “This circle, the contour of which is exactly formed, shows that the letter was pierced laterally by a circular hole. This hole did not penetrate the whole thickness of the letter, and served, like the nick of our days, to enable the compositor to tell by touch which way to set the letter in his stick, so as to be right in the printed page. If the letter had been laid on its other side, the existence of this little circle would have been lost to us for ever.” It would, however, be quite possible for a perforated type, with the end of the hole slightly clogged with ink, to present precisely the same appearance as this, which M. Madden concludes was only slightly pierced; and were it not for the fact that the pulling-up of the letter from the forme is itself evidence that the line could not have been threaded, we should hesitate to affirm that either of the types shown was not perforated. The sharp edge of the circumference in the type of the _De laudibus_, leaving, as it does, in the original page, a clearly embossed circle in the paper, makes it evident that the depression was not the result of a mere flaw in the casting, although it is possible (as we have satisfied ourselves by experiment) for the surface of the side of a roughly-cast type to be depressed by air-holes, some of which assume a circular form, and may even perforate a thin type. Indeed, at the present day it is next to impossible to cast by hand a type which is not a little sunk on some part of its sides; and this roughness of surface we can imagine to have been far more apparent on the types {26} cast by the earliest printers.