The actual origin of Printing has been matter of learned controversy. From the earliest ages, impressions had been taken from seals. There are in the British Museum blocks of lead, impressed with the name or stamp of the Roman authorities. The Chinese, who seem to have had a glimpse of every invention of Europe, produced blocks of wood-engraving, with which they multiplied copies, by impression at least, so early as the tenth century; and even appear to have applied it to a species of bank note. Whether the invention was introduced into Europe by Marco Polo, (who visited China in the thirteenth century), or by others, it is known, that printed playing cards and devotional tracts, (though of the simplest structure, generally a single page), were not infrequent, from the year A.D. 1400. Still, the operation was so expensive, and, also, so insufficient, that the Art of Printing cannot be said, to have been yet discovered. For this discovery, the essential was the use of _moveable types_. The honour of this most simple, yet most comprehensive, change, has been warmly disputed by Holland, and Germany. But, though Coster, a Hollander, adopted it early; general opinion gives it to Gutenburg, a printer at Strasburg, between 1436 and 1442. Gutenburg was originally a block-printer; at length the fortunate idea occurred to him, of getting rid of the solid page, and making his types separate; those, in the first instance, were cut out of wood. Returning to Mayence, his native city, a partnership with Faust supplied him with capital. Faust made a second step in the mechanical portion of the art, by casting the types in metal. A subsequent partnership with Schoeffer, Faust’s son-in-law, supplied all that was wanting to the art, in his invention of the Punch for making the types. The partners subsequently quarrelled, and Gutenburg, in 1458, formed a new establishment in Mayence. The storming of the city by Adolphus of Nassau, in 1462, dispersed the workmen, and thus spread the art through Europe. It was thenceforth practised in Italy, in France, in Spain, and in England, (at Westminster, in 1475.) The _Cologne Chronicle_, printed in 1474, states, that the first large volume produced by printing, was the Bible, (an edition of the Vulgate,) a work which cost a preparation of ten years. This edition is without date, or printer’s name, but is supposed to have been completed in 1455.