After Faust’s death, Schœffer continued the business in partnership with his father-in-law Conrad Faust, who did not however take an active share in its management, and who died about the year 1479. Conrad Helif and Dr. Humery seem also to have been for a time connected with him. From 1467 to 1503, the date of Schœffer’s death, he printed, according to Wetter, 49 works,[139] several of which were second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth editions of those previously issued. The agency which John Faust the elder had established in Paris for the sale of his books, became an emporium to which other printers besides Schœffer sent the productions of their presses. This was managed by one Hermann de Stathoen, who had been appointed by Schœffer; but he dying in Paris, in 1474, an unnaturalized foreigner, the whole stock of books in his charge was confiscated by the King, Louis XI. Schœffer at once made such representations to the monarch as led to a royal decree, awarding him the sum of 2425 crowns, by way of compensation for the confiscated property. Besides the agency at Paris, Schœffer established business relations at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, where in 1479, he was entered on the roll of burghers. In 1489 he became one of the secular judges of Mentz. A wealthy, an honoured, and an influential citizen, he died, it is supposed, in the year 1503. His last work was a fourth edition of his celebrated Psalter, published in 1502. The next year, his eldest son, John, issued the “Mercurius Trismegistus,” which is declared in the imprint to be his first work, and by him the business was continued until 1538.[140] The death of Schœffer brings us to a point in the narrative, where we may pause a moment, to note the progress of the art, of which, next to Gutenberg, he was the most eminent founder. Perhaps no art ever rose to perfection with such rapidity, after its groundwork had been completed, as that of Typography. Little more than thirty years had elapsed from the time of printing the _Biblia Pauperum_ from wooden blocks, when Gutenberg’s separable hand-cut letters were followed and superseded by Schœffer’s cast fusile metal types. The art, which with Faust’s assistance, Gutenberg founded and Schœffer perfected, remains to this day essentially the same that it was in 1455. Steam power and machinery may to a large extent have superseded the old hand-press invented by Gutenberg; and the art of stereotyping may also have multiplied the power of the types in disseminating and cheapening useful knowledge; but the foundation and principles of Letter-press Printing remain unaltered and unalterable. Types, ink, and pressure, still produce books as they were first produced, and the finest productions of the present day are not superior in Typographic beauty, or aught else that stamps a work a masterpiece, to the best efforts of the Fathers of the Art, four hundred years and more ago.