“In a cell of a cloister of Arbogast sits a man with a wan forehead, a long beard, and fixed look, before a table, supporting his head with his hand. Suddenly he passes his fingers through his beard with a quick joyous movement--the hermit of the cell has discovered a solution of the problem he sought! He rises and utters a cry; it was as a relief to a long pent-up thought. He hastily turns to his trunk, opens it, and takes therefrom a cutting instrument; then, with nervous jerking movements, he sets himself to carve a small piece of wood. In all these movements there was joy and anxiety, as if he feared that his idea would escape,--the diamond he had found, and which he wished to set and polish for posterity. Gutenberg cut roughly and with feverish activity, his brow covered with drops of sweat, while his eyes followed with ardor the progress of his work. He wrought thus a great while, but the time seemed short. At length, he dipped the wood in a black liquid, placed it on parchment, and bearing the weight of his body on his hand in the manner of a press, he printed the first letter which he had cut, in relief. He contemplated the result, and a second cry, full of the ecstasy of satisfied genius, burst from his lips; then he closed his eyes with an air of happiness such as would befit the saints in paradise, and fell exhausted on a joint-stool; when overcome of sleep, he murmured, ‘I am immortal!’ “Then he had a dream which troubled him. ‘I heard two voices,’ said he, in relating it; ‘two unknown and of a different sound, which spoke alternately in my soul. One said to me, “Rejoice, John; thou art immortal! Henceforth, light shall be spread by thee throughout the world. People who dwell a thousand leagues from thee, strangers to the thoughts of our country, shall read and comprehend all the ideas now mute,--spread and multiplied as the reverberations of the thunder, by thee, by thy work. Rejoice, thou art immortal! for thou art the interpreter whom the nations await that they may converse together. Thou art immortal; for thy discovery comes to give perpetual life to the genius which would be still-born without thee, and who, by acknowledgment, shall all make known in their turn the immortality of him who immortalized them!” The voice ceased, and left me in the delirium of glory. But I heard another voice. It said to me, “Yes, John, thou art immortal. But at what a price? Thought not unlike thine, is it always pure and holy enough to be worthy of being delivered to the ears and eyes of the human race? Are there not many--the greater number it may be--which merit rather a thousand times to be annihilated, and sink to oblivion, than to be repeated and multiplied in the world? Man is oftener perverse than wise and good; he will profane the gift that you make him; he will abuse the new faculty that you create for him. More of the world, in place of blessing, will curse thee. Some men will be born with souls powerful and seductive,