Bound to live by labour, and under a semi-ascetic discipline, self-abnegation was a distinguishing characteristic of the Frères de la Vie Commune; while the instruction of youth, and the promotion of piety, were the objects to which they devoted their lives and labours. The multiplication of books, which formed a portion of their occupations, could not but prove a powerful means for assisting them to the attainment of the objects which they had at heart. These books were naturally divided into educational and devotional, according to the classes of individuals for whose use they were designed. Among the former would be A B C Dariums, Catonis Disticha, Donatuses, Doctrinals, and such like. Among the latter, the Poor Man’s Bible, the Apocalypse of St. John, the Book of Canticles, the History of the Virgin, the Arts of Memory and Dying, and the Mirror of Human Salvation. As the operations of the Brotherhood extended, and their schools increased, the greater would be the demand for the above works, and the more laborious the efforts of the copyists to meet that demand. At their establishments, whether at Deventer, Bruges, Brussels, Zwolle, or elsewhere, artists and illuminators would be found among their ranks. And as Zwolle is known to have been a very early seat of the engraver’s art, such pictorial embellishments as these artists designed would speedily be transferred to wood. That such was the case, and that Zwolle was the place where Block-books were first produced, seems to be certain, from the fact that in 1489 the Brethren there used the original blocks of the _Biblia Pauperum_ in printing the work “Passye ende dat Leven van onsers liefs hern.” The silver cross and arms of Zwolle are also to be found in the cuts of the Book of Canticles. As the labours of the copyists increased, and as scrolls and inscriptions were added to the engraved figures, and the art of the ‘letter-snyder’ was called in to assist that of the ‘beelde-maker,’ and the ‘formen-’ and ‘figure-snyder,’ there can be no question but that it not unfrequently occurred to the minds of thoughtful copyists, that whole texts of books could be so engraved. A representation to that effect to the chief of the brotherhood would lead to an order to carry the idea into execution. In the descriptive text of the _Ars Moriendi_ and like works, and in the twenty xylographic pages of the first Latin edition of the “Mirror of Salvation,” we see the realization of the idea. But in the course of continually cutting the letters on the wood, an intelligent ‘letter-snyder’ would be struck by the constant recurrence of certain letters and combinations of letters,--a fact much more likely to attract his attention than a copyist’s,--and he would find, in counting over these letters, that his future labours could be greatly abridged, by merely cutting as many separate letters and combinations of each sort, as would suffice for printing a page or two