This is one of the most decorative alphabets of the time, but good proofs of the Wagner alphabet of Nuremberg, in which the same design had already been used, are even more effective--compare this M, N, or T with the Wagner E. Unfortunately, very few of the latter, which are on a black ground, print well. The Avignon initials given further on are also of this pine-cone pattern, as are those also in the _Psalterium Virginis Marie_ of Alanus de Rupe, printed, it is stated, in the most Christian kingdom of Sweden, _cum initialibus ligno incisis_, in 1498. It is quite possible that the later printers copied from Wagner, but the design they all use is one that is frequently met with in old manuscripts, and, like most other fundamental patterns, there is no doubt that this was its origin. Our last Geneva specimens are taken from the very rare missal printed by Bellot. The M is from the title-page. The other initials are somewhat in the style of the Lyons _Catalogus Sanctorum_, but they are even more like those of a Troyes missal printed by Lecoq. CHAPTER VIII VENICE It was at Subiaco, not far from Rome, that printing was first introduced by the Germans, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, who commenced operations most probably in 1464, their first book being a Donatus. The second was a Lactantius, the earliest book in which legible Greek characters were used, for those which appeared in a few words in the Offices of Cicero, printed at Mayence in the same year, were mingled with Roman letters, and with so many errors, that it must have needed a clever reader to guess the meaning. The Lactantius was finished on the 25th of October 1465, ‘_in venerabili Monasterio Sublacensi_.’ After Subiaco, presses were established successively in different towns of Italy, first at Rome, where Ulric Han or Hahn of Ingoldstadt, in Bavaria (Gallus in the latinised form of the name), commenced operations in 1467. Sweynheim and Pannartz also removed to Rome at that date, where they printed for about ten years, dying respectively in 1477 and 1478. The next comers were George Lauer of Würtzburg and Giovanni Filippo di Lignamine, whose celebrated _Cronica Summorum Pontificum imperatorumque_ contains interesting information about the first printers of Mayence, Strasburg, and Rome. But books with initials printed at Rome before the end of the fifteenth century are not common, and even when met with, if we except some handsome ones used in some of their books in 1470 by Sweynheim and Pannartz, the ornamental letters of this town are relatively of but little interest. It was at Venice that this branch of typographical art was to reach its highest perfection, especially in the use of beautiful initials, and was to make its impressions renowned throughout the world and sought after by collectors in future days.