The patriarch Job, who is supposed to have lived about 2,300 years after the creation, exclaimed, “O that my words were now written! O that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen, and hid in the rock forever!” Stung with the unjust accusation of his friends, he desires to record his words that the generations following might see the justice of his cause. The English translation has given the allusion to printing to the text, the original word signifying rather to ingrave on a plate, which was doubtless the only printing known to Job. Montfauçon purchased at Rome in 1699 an ancient book entirely composed of lead. It was about four inches long and three inches wide; and not only were the two pieces that formed the cover, and the leaves, six in number, of lead, but also the stick inserted through the rings to hold the leaves together, as well as the hinges and nails. It contained figures of Egyptian idols, and unintelligible writing. China, our ancestor in invention, from remote ages had a kind of stereotyping or printing. It was not, however, as some have supposed, like our printing, phonetic, or the expression of sound, but, like the Egyptian, hieroglyphical; being purely of an artificial structure, denoting every idea by its appropriate sign without any relation to the utterance, and speaking to the eye like the numerical ciphers of the Europeans, which every one understands and utters in his own way. And like most other nations of antiquity, the Chinese were content to remain without alphabetical writing. It is, however, due to the Chinese to add, that they led the way in making good printing-paper. When they invented making it, does not appear, some affirming that they had the use of it from time immemorial; others that they first discovered it in the second century of the Christian era. Brass, as more durable, was used for inscriptions designed to last the longest, such as treaties, laws, and alliances. Seals, also, were used by the ancients for impressing soft substances. In the British Museum there is a stamp of metal with raised letters. On the back of it is a ring, enabling the owner to wear it as a signet; his name, Caius Julius Cæcilius Hermias, being engraved in reversed letters upon it. +-------------+ | CICAECILI | | HERMIAE.SN. | +-------------+ Expanded according to the modern practice, the signet reads:-- C. I. CÆCILII HERMIÆ SIGNUM. _Caii Julii Cæcilii Hermiæ Signum._