The new birth of civilization (usually called the Renaissance) began in Italy, where civilization had never quite died out, at some time during the fourteenth century, and took the form at first of the study of classical literature. This led naturally to a search for old manuscripts; and so ardent did this search become that the libraries of cathedrals and monasteries in all the civilized countries were ransacked. Many new libraries were founded, especially in Italy, to hold the old manuscripts that were discovered. A great impetus was given to the movement by the exodus of scholars from Constantinople, and their migration west to Italy, during the half century between the year 1400 and the fall of Constantinople before the Ottoman Turks in 1453. [Illustration: The Printing of Books] Therefore, when the news of the invention of Gutenberg reached the scholars of Italy and other lands, they seized upon it as an undreamed-of blessing for bringing about that widespread study of the classical authors which they had been struggling under so many difficulties to accomplish. To narrate and describe the progress made since then in the art of printing would be to rewrite what has been written from time to time in books and magazines and papers. To describe and point out the other arts that have sprung directly from the art of printing, such as the manufacture of printing presses and allied machinery, would require an enormous book of a wholly technical nature; to describe and point out the arts that have been made necessary, and the arts that have been made possible, by the invention of printing would entail a history of most of the industrial arts of the present day; while to mention and adequately describe the measures that have resulted from the invention of printing, and those made necessary and possible by it, would entail a history of all the civilization that has come into being since printing was invented. The effects of the invention of printing are most of them so obvious that it would be unnecessary to call attention to them. No other one art seems to be so directly and clearly to be credited with the progress of civilization. In the minds of many people, perhaps of most people, printing is considered the most important invention ever made. Maybe it is; but let us remind ourselves that the gun came before the printing-press, and that the civilization contributed to by the printing press would not have been possible without the gun. It may be answered that, nevertheless, the printing press contributed more than the gun; in the same way that a bank contributes more to the welfare of a city than does the policeman who guards the bank.