Gutenberg was born at Mentz, a free and rich city on the Rhine, about the year 1400, and, when yet a young man, fled, on account of political dissensions, to Strasbourg, sixty miles distant. Of his childhood little is known; yet some German and other writers draw pleasing pictures of his youth. They represent him as high-spirited, thoughtful, and devout; influenced by a desire that good books might be made common, and as having “a foreseeing consciousness” of the part he was to act in bringing it about. “He said to himself, from his earliest years,” says one of his biographers, “God suffers in the great multitudes whom his sacred word cannot reach. Religious truth is captive in a small number of manuscript books, which guard the common treasure, instead of diffusing it. Let us break the seal which holds the holy things; give wings to the truth, that by means of speech, no longer written at great expense by the hand that wearies itself, but multiplied as the air by an unwearied machine, it may fly to seek every soul born into the world!” If this was true of Gutenberg while young, no wonder that his manhood was crowned so gloriously. He placed before himself at the outset a great and worthy object; he felt through life the thrill of an inspiring purpose, which stimulated and ennobled his nature, and tended naturally to success. Had he, like thousands, been contented to drift through the world with the current wherever it chanced to bear him, living for himself and the fleeting present, never should we have heard of John Gutenberg. But there is a fact in Gutenberg’s early history which does not seem to present him in an amiable light, as he figures in a lawsuit, having been sued by the father of his betrothed, to compel him to fulfill his promise of marriage. There is, however, no evidence that Gutenberg intended any wrong in this affair, as he sincerely loved Anna von Isernen Thür,[1] the young lady to whom he was engaged. She was of noble family, of the city of Strasbourg. His property had been confiscated in Mentz in the struggle between the plebeians and the nobility, and his failure in keeping his troth is attributed to his sensitiveness to his misfortunes. [1] Family name, it is said, from the possession of a feudal castle on the heights of the Rhine.