perpetually referring to it as containing wood-cuts designed, if not engraved, by Albert Durer’s master,--and such, they conclude, must necessarily possess a very high degree of excellence. Breydenbach was a canon of the cathedral church of Mentz, and he dedicates the account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Mount Sinai to Berthold, archbishop of that see. The frontispiece, although most deserving of attention as a specimen of wood engraving, is not the only cut in the book which is worthy of notice. Views are given, engraved on wood, of the most remarkable places which he visited;--and those of Venice, Corfu, Modon, and the country round Jerusalem, which are of great length, are inserted in the book as “folding plates.” Each of the above views is too large to have been engraved on one block. For that of Venice, which is about five feet long, and ten inches high, several blocks must have been required, from each of which impressions would have to be taken singly, and afterwards pasted together, as is at present done in such views as are too wide to be contained on one sheet. Those views, with respect to the manner in which they are executed, are superior to everything of the same kind which had previously appeared. The work also contains smaller cuts printed with the type, which are not generally remarkable for their execution, although some of them are drawn and engraved in a free and spirited manner. The following cut is a reduced copy of that which is prefixed to a chapter intitled “De Surianis qui Ierosolimis et locis illis manentes etiam se asserunt esse Christianos:”-- [Illustration] In a cut of animals there is a figure of a giraffe,[IV-51] named by Breydenbach “seraffa,” of a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and an animal something like an oran-outang, except that it has a tail. Of the last the traveller observes, “non constat de nomine.” Some account of this book, with fac-similes of the cuts, will be found in Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol iii. pp. 216-228. In the copy there described, belonging to Earl Spencer, the beautiful frontispiece was wanting. [Footnote IV-51: This is probably the first figure of the giraffe that was communicated to the “reading public” of Europe. Its existence was afterwards denied by several naturalists; and it is only within a comparatively recent period that the existence of such an animal was clearly established.]