A smoky lamp hung from the beam which divided the ceiling of the room into two equal parts, and shed its feeble light on the table where John Gutenberg was working. But beware, reader, of representing this table to yourself as furnished with any of those perfect instruments which are the improvements of modern days; with a case for the letters, a _visorium_, a composing-stick, a galley, or a catch; it was nothing more than a great oaken board, on which his letters were placed in little woollen bags, ranged in alphabetical order; the form in which they were to be disposed was in front of the artist, and at his side, on a desk, roughly put together, reposed the heavy in-folio which he used as a manuscript. Let the compositor of the present day, who complains, often justly, of the illegible copy of the poet or the philosopher, compare humbly his task with that of his great predecessor! He was obliged first to select from his bags, to place the letters with great delicacy, to turn back to the manuscript in order to read it, and to recommence his labour incessantly until one whole line, laboriously put together, had been ranged along a string; if at this point his negligence, as a compositor, had permitted one fault, he must needs unfasten the string, and recommence his work from the beginning! Miserable place as it was, there worked the first printer of the world! A humble cradle which contained a giant! Poor, wretched house, what a difference between it and those palaces which the disciples of the great inventor have since built for themselves! The shutters of Gutenberg’s room were hermetically closed, not one of the moon’s silver rays could penetrate them; the smell of the printer’s ink, of the oil, and the black smoke, made the close air of this poor apartment still more oppressive; a painful stillness prevailed, disturbed only by the metallic noise of the letters as they touched each other. But I will not dwell any longer on this melancholy picture, in which you might have seen the old man, whose stray white locks shaded his broad forehead, whose feeble fingers could only slowly and with trembling fulfil their task, whose knees tottered, and who whenever he turned over the leaves of his manuscript was forced to wait a few seconds to regain breath and strength. No, no, reader, think of Gutenberg rather as you would doubtless like to see him, standing on his pedestal of stone, in the centre of the square, in front of the Cathedral of Maïence, one of the last achievements, but by no means one of the happiest efforts, of the great Thorwaldsen.