Setting aside, therefore, the conclusions of Baron Heinecken and Wetter in regard to the party by whom, and the date when, the _Speculum_ was originally printed, (which nevertheless are not without grounds for their support), this view of the question gives to some unknown brother or brethren the merit of having independently worked out the idea of separable letters on wood about the years 1450-53; thus adding one more to the number of known instances, when at certain historic periods the minds of individuals wholly unknown to each other, and in widely different parts of the world, have almost simultaneously worked out the same invention, or made the same discovery. Instances of such coincidences will no doubt at once occur to the minds of intelligent readers; I shall therefore only refer by way of illustration to the invention of Photography by M. Niepce and Mr. Fox Talbot, and the discovery of the planet Neptune by the English and French astronomers, Adams and Leverrier. The rarity of copies of works in which the types used in the _Speculum_ have been recognised, is accounted for by the fact of their speedy supercession by cast fusile metal types, when a knowledge of the Arts of Typography and Typefounding became spread throughout Europe by the dispersion of the workmen at Mentz, on the capture and sack of that city in 1462. Most, if not all of the early printers, were men of learning. Many of those who first practised the art in the Netherlands would consequently have been educated by the Brethren and Clerks of the Common Life; and amongst these some were very probably members of that fraternity. It is certain that at Brussels (1476) and at Zwolle, as well as at Rheingau (1474) and Rostock (1476), the Brethren speedily practised the new art as first brought to perfection at Mentz. And at one or other of these places, it is much more likely that Veldener obtained the cuts of the Mirror of Salvation, which he reprinted at Culembourg in 1483, than that he purchased them from the descendants of Coster at Haarlem;--a statement which, however much insisted upon by Dutch, and reiterated of late by French and English writers, is purely suppositious, and utterly void of the slightest foundation in fact. FOOTNOTES: [83] Schrijver, P. Laurecrans voor Laurens Coster. Haarlem, 1628. 4to.