It is singular how Mr. Ottley, who contends for the truth of Papillon’s story of the Cunio, and who maintains that the art of engraving figures and text upon wood was well known and practised previous to 1285, should believe the account given by Cornelius of the origin of Coster’s invention. If he does not believe this part of the account, with what consistency can he require other people to give credit to the rest? With respect to the origin and progress of the invention, Cornelius was as likely to be correctly informed as he was with regard to the theft and the establishment of printing at Mentz; if therefore Coster’s advocates themselves establish the incorrectness of his testimony in the first part of the story, they destroy the general credibility of his evidence. With respect to the fragments of “Alexandri Galli Doctrinale” and “Catonis Disticha” which have been discovered, printed with the same, or similar types as the Speculum Salvationis, no good argument can be founded on them in support of Coster’s claims, although the facts which they establish are decisive of the fallacy of Meerman’s assumptions. In order to suit his own theory, he was pleased to assert that the first edition of the Speculum was the only one of that book printed by Coster, and that it was printed with wooden types. Mr. Ottley has, however, shown that the edition which Meerman and others supposed to be the first was in reality the second; and that the presumed second was unquestionably the first, and that the text was throughout printed with metal types by means of a press. It is thus the fate of all Coster’s advocates that the last should always produce some fact directly contradicting his predecessors’ speculations, but not one confirmatory of the truth of the story on which all their arguments are based. Meerman questions the accuracy of Cornelius as reported by Junius; Meerman’s arguments are rejected by Koning; and Mr. Ottley, who espouses the same cause, has from his diligent collation of two different editions of the Speculum afforded a convincing proof that on a most material point all his predecessors are wrong. His inquiries have established beyond a doubt, that the text of the first edition of the Speculum was printed wholly with metal types; and that in the second the text was printed partly from metal types by means of a press, and partly from wood-blocks by means of friction. The assertion that Coster printed the first edition with wooden types, and that his grandsons and successors printed the second edition with types of metal, is thus most clearly refuted. As no printer’s name has been discovered in any of the fragments referred to, it is uncertain where or when they were printed. It however seems more likely that they were printed in Holland or the Low Countries than in Germany. The presumption of their antiquity in consequence of their rarity is not a good ground of argument. Of an