The Emperor Maximilian ennobled the printers and compositors of the new art, authorizing them to wear robes braided with gold and silver, such as the nobility only had the right to wear, and giving them, for a coat of arms, an eagle with wings extended on the globe, symbol of free and rapid flight and universal conquest. Deserved honor! fitting symbol! What marvels has printing wrought. It has given elementary instruction to the masses,--putting into every hand, however humble or toilworn, the printed page, multiplying books to teach, amuse, and elevate even the little child. It has reformed corrupt religions, fashioned and developed philosophy anew, and permeated laws with their true spirit. Before its magic touch, the old feudal despotisms of the dark ages have fallen, and later and no less oppressive systems have wasted away. By its aid time and space seem annihilated, as “railways open to it routes, steam lends to it wings, and the electric telegraph gives it the instantaneousness of powder!” The “preserver of all arts,” it broods over and perpetuates all useful institutions and discoveries; and trade and commerce are stimulated, guided, systematized, enlarged, and furnished with boundless facilities. But this mighty engine can be used for evil as well as for good, and strike like the thunder-bolt the best interests of man. The poet-historian from whom we have before quoted, illustrates this by a dream of Gutenberg’s, which he is said to have related to his friends, and to have been translated from the German, at Strasbourg, by Mr. Garaud. Gutenberg had succeeded in an important experiment. His success filled him with such enthusiasm that he scarcely slept the night following. In his troubled and imperfect rest he had his dream,--a dream so prophetic, and so near to the truth, that one questions, in reading it, if it be not the reflecting presentiment of a wakeful sage rather than the fevered dream of a slumbering artisan. This is the account or legend of this dream as it is preserved in the library of the counsellor Aulique Beck:--