It is probable that Gutenberg first conceived the idea of movable types, at Strasburg, in or about 1436; and that “with the aid of Faust’s money, and Sheffer’s ingenuity,”[2] the art was perfected at Mentz in or about 1452. “In the first book which appeared with a date and the printer’s name,” continues the author I have quoted above--“The Psalter printed by Faust and Scheffer at Mentz, in 1457--the large initial letters, engraved on wood, and printed in red and blue ink, are the most beautiful specimens of this kind of ornament which the united efforts of the wood-engraver and the pressman have produced. They have been imitated in modern times but not excelled. As they are the first letters, in point of time, printed with two colors, so are they likely to continue the first in point of excellence.” From this time the art made rapid progress, as connected with the press, which in a very rude and primitive state now came generally into vogue, though the machine of 1460 was as far different from one of Hoe’s marvelous power-presses as is an Indian’s bark canoe from an Atlantic steamer. Between this date and the conclusion of the century, we find one wood-engraving by an unknown author, the frontispiece of Breydenbach’s Travels, so infinitely superior to every thing that succeeded it for many years as to deserve special notice. It contains the first specimen of cross-hatching known to exist, and attempts both shade and color, not without considerable effect. It is said, by the author above quoted, “not to be only the finest wood-engraving up to that date, but to be in point of design and execution as far superior to the best cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as Albert Durer’s designs are to the cuts in the oldest edition of the ”Poor Preacher’s Bible.“ The engraved frontispiece, in question, bears the date 1486, the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493; and the _Biblia Pauperum_, as it is--probably erroneously--called, in various editions from 1462 to 1475.” The following cut is a representation of the press in use at this period, and for some considerable time afterward. It is a fac-simile of an engraving of “the press of Jodocus Badius Ascensianus, from the title page of a book printed by him in 1498.” [Illustration]