at a time; the same letters answering again and again for the work in hand, or for any other that might be required. In the reduction of this idea to practice, the reason may be seen why the first edition of the _Speculum_ is partly xylographic and partly typographic. The success attending these first Dutch efforts at printing with separable types would at once lead to further applications of the art in the production of elementary educational books; and as the reputation of the Brethren as schoolmasters was great, and they were often invited and sent for by the magistrates of cities to open schools in Germany as well as in Holland, they would carry such books with them. The fact of fragments of early Donatuses and Doctrinals being found in Germany is thus accounted for, without any necessity for supposing, with Junius and his followers, that the types from which they were printed were stolen from Coster of Haarlem, and carried away to Mentz: while sets of types cut by different ‘letter-snyders’ would also account for the differences observed in the typography of the four folio editions of the _Speculum_. Bearing in mind then, the objects to which the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life devoted themselves;--the classes of books, educational and devotional, of which the block-books consisted, and their special adaptability to promote the objects of the fraternity:--the fact, that Zwolle was one of the earliest seats of the engraver’s art, as well as a central station of the brotherhood;--that the original blocks of the _Biblia Pauperum_ were reproduced at the Brethren’s printing press there in 1489;--that large editions of these works were never required,[131] and that therefore one printing establishment might suffice for the needs in this respect of the whole fraternity;--that the arms of the city were engraved on one of these books, the Song of Songs;--that all those with pictorial embellishments, claimed as Costerian productions, are, in the opinion of so competent a judge as Ottley, the work of the same artist, or at least of the same school, as regards design and execution, as the _Biblia Pauperum_;--and that from the paper-marks, as well as the character of the costume and armour of the figures in the _Speculum_, that work could not have been printed until about the year 1453, or later:--the conclusion seems reasonable, that all the works which from 1588 have been traditionally attributed to Coster and his alleged successors, came in reality from the establishment of the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life at Zwolle:--and if so, this satisfactorily accounts for there being neither name nor initial nor date, to indicate either author, designer or printer; the principles of the fraternity being such as to merge the individual in the brotherhood, and to make the work of one a portion of the common work of all.