The difference between the production each year of a few hundred copies of religious or classical works by the laborious toil of the monks or the university scribes, works which could at best benefit only the limited circle of readers who were within reach either of the monasteries or of the universities, and a world-wide distribution, as well of the great books of the earlier times which belonged to the world’s literature as of the current thoughts of the contemporary generation, was a difference, not of degree, but of kind. It was a revolution in the history of human thought and in the influence of thought upon humanity. If the invention of printing had not taken shape in the brain of Gutenberg, it would doubtless have come to the world through some other worker, and, in fact, with no very great delay, for other men were already busying themselves with the same great need and were on the track of the same means of supplying the need. As the history stands, however, the credit for the revolution must be given to the mirror-maker of Mayence. Other sailors would certainly have found their way to the Western Continent if the opportunity or the attempt of Columbus had failed, but it is to Columbus that history gives the laurel crown. Gutenberg, and the printers who followed him, naturally selected as the first models for their newly founded type the script letters with which they were familiar in the best manuscripts. The first font of type manufactured by Gutenberg, which was used in his earliest publication, _The Folio Bible_, was known as the “missal type,” having been copied from the script adopted by the monks for the books of worship. This style of type was followed for a long time for Bibles and for religious works generally. One of the earlier objections against printed books was that they were so much less beautiful in their appearance than the work of the best scribes, and it was the finest script that remained as the ideal to be attained by the type-founders and the clear black impression of the best oak-gall writing ink that was to be imitated by the impressions from the presses.