The four controverted editions of the Speculum may be considered as holding a middle place between block-books,--which are wholly executed, both text and cuts, by the wood-engraver,--and books printed with moveable types: for in three of the editions the cuts are printed by means of friction with a rubber or burnisher, in the manner of the History of the Virgin, and other block-books, while the text, set in moveable type, has been worked off by means of a press; and in a fourth edition, in which the cuts are taken in the same manner as in the former, twenty pages of the text are printed from wood-blocks by means of friction, while the remainder are printed in the same manner as the whole of the text in the three other editions; that is, from moveable metal types, and by means of a press. There are fifty-eight cuts in the Speculum, each of which is divided into two compartments by a slender column in the middle. In all the editions the cuts are placed as head-pieces at the top of each page, having underneath them, in two columns, the explanatory text. Under each compartment the title of the subject, in Latin, is engraved on the block. The following reduced copy of the first cut will give an idea of their form, as every subject has pillars at the side, and is surmounted by an arch in the same style. [Illustration] The style of engraving in those cuts is similar to those of the Poor Preachers’ Bible. The former are, however, on the whole executed with greater delicacy, and contain more work. The shadows and folds of the drapery in the first forty-eight cuts are indicated by short parallel lines, which are mostly horizontal. In the forty-ninth and subsequent cuts, as has been noticed by Mr. Ottley, a change in the mode of indicating the shades and the folds in the draperies is perceptible; for the short parallel lines, instead of being horizontal as in the former, are mostly slanting. Heineken observes, that to the forty-eighth cut inclusive, the chapters in the printed work are conformable with the old Latin manuscripts; and as a perceptible change in the execution commences with the forty-ninth, it is not unlikely that the cuts were engraved by two different persons. The two following cuts are fac-similes of the compartments of the first, of which a reduced copy has been previously given. [Illustration] In the above cut, its title, “Casus Luciferi,”--the Fall of Lucifer,--is engraved at the bottom; and the subject represented is Satan and the rebellious angels driven out of heaven, as typical of man’s disobedience and fall. The following are the first two lines of the column of text underneath the cut in the Latin editions: +Inchoatur speculum humanae salvacionis In quo patet casus hominis et modus repactionis.+ Which may be translated into English thus: In the Mirror of Salvation here is represented plain The fall of man, and by what means he made his peace again.