It were just as rational to argue, that, because the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans possessed boilers, and boiling water, and steam, with which they might have propelled steamboats, had they known how, therefore they _had_ steamboats--as to assert, that, because they possessed reversed moulds and stamps, in relief or intaglio, for the making of pottery, with which they might have produced colored impressions on papyrus or linen, had they conceived the idea of doing so, therefore they _did_ reproduce works of art from plates or types. It appears most probable that the first direct approach to this art was the practice, when playing cards were first introduced in Europe, of the German card-makers, to use stencils in order to draw, accurately and invariably, the outlines of the figures on their cards, which were then filled in with color by the hand. This, though not originally intended to facilitate multiplication so much as accuracy, would naturally suggest that idea. The next known step, in progress, was the use of monogrammatic stamps, some of them of most elaborate and exquisite design and execution, for the impression on illuminated manuscripts, such as missals, breviaries, bibles and other religious works, of the large, beautiful and often many-colored initial letters. And these, there is much reason to believe, were more or less in use so early as A. D. 1400. The history of the first known wood-cut is as follows. From a convent within fifty miles of Augsburgh, where in 1418 the first mention of a kartenmacher, card-engraver, occurs, the earliest wood-cut known--the St. Christopher, now in the collection of the Earl of Spencer--was obtained. The outlines are engraved on wood, and thence taken off in dark coloring matter, resembling printer’s ink, on the paper; after which the impression appears to have been colored by means of a stencil. This cut is extremely well-designed, as regards the principal figures, which, with the exception of the extremities, are executed in such style as would not disgrace Albert Durer himself. The perspective is--as usual, in old wood-cuts even of a later date than this, and executed by artists of high grade, such as Hans Burgmair and Hans Schaufflein, nearly a century afterward--utterly disregarded. It was, indeed, scarce understood. The second and third cuts in existence, also in Lord Spencer’s collection, are an “Annunciation” and “St. Bridget,” both similarly printed in outline, and colored by stenciling, the last of these is curious, as showing, on examination of the back of the plate--for it is not, like the others, pasted into a book--that the impression was not taken by means of a press, but by friction on the paper superimposed to the block, by means of a burnisher or similar instrument, just as proofs are now taken by engravers.