In closing our survey of the extant uncials, it is to be borne in mind that we are not at liberty to regard even the oldest of them as presenting the very form of the New Testament autographs. The books of the New Testament, at all events the majority of them, were not originally intended for publication at all, while the others were meant for only a limited circle of readers. Now these recent papyrus discoveries have shown conclusively what a vast difference existed even in those days between the =book-hand= and what we may call the =hand of common life= and business. A glance at Kenyon’s _Palæography of Greek Papyri_ will show how fundamental is the distinction between literary and non-literary papyri. That writer states that in many cases the difference is just as marked as between handwriting and print at the present day, and he instances also the distinction between the book-hand and the charter-hand of the Middle Ages. Of course documents of this or the other class may occasionally be found written in the hand that is not the usual one, a prescription, _e.g._, in book-hand, or conversely a literary text in the hand of common life. The greater part of Aristotle’s work on the _Polity of the Athenians_, for instance, has been preserved in the common hand. This papyrus, which is attributed to the first century of the Christian era, is the work of four scribes. But only one of these writes in a style approximating to the book-hand; the other parts are written in a very cursive style on the back of an old account, probably by one who had borrowed a copy of the work for a short time and transcribed it with the help of two or three friends or slaves. Kenyon quite properly instances this as an illustration of the manner of the origin and propagation of the New Testament books, and suggests that this mode of propagation has to be considered in connection with times of persecution. Our very oldest manuscripts are superb codices, editions de luxe, such as could be prepared only in an age when the Church had attained a position of affluence and power. The distinction referred to above is one that has had but little attention paid to it hitherto, as is shown by the illustration given in Harris’s excellent work on the New Testament autographs. It is manifest at the same time that this consideration is of great importance in trying to understand the origin and dissemination of the various readings that occur in our manuscripts. It is just a pity that Kenyon has not given a sample of this manuscript of Aristotle in his book, seeing that the latter is more accessible to the ordinary student than the complete facsimile edited in 1891 by the Trustees of the British Museum, or the Plate published in the second volume of the work of the Palæographical Society. [Sidenote: Uncial and minuscule script.]