From the German cities, on the boundaries betwixt guild labour and free invention, did the art of printing come into the world--the greatest acquisition of the human race, after that of the alphabet. The mind of man could now be conveyed, bound up in wood and leather, upon a thousand roads at the same time, all over the earth; the powers of man in church and state, in science and handicraft, were unfolded, not only more powerfully, more variously, and more richly, but in a totally different manner from the quiet plodding of the past. A change was produced in nations in one century which formerly would have taken a thousand years. Every individual was bound together in one great intellectual unity with his contemporaries, and every nation with other civilized nations. For the first time a regular connection in the intellectual development of the human race was secured. The mind of the individual will continue to live upon earth perhaps many thousand years after he has ceased to breathe; but the soul of each individual nation gains a capacity of renovating itself which will, we hope, remove its decease, according to the old laws of nature, to an incalculable distance. The black art had not been invented many years when a spring-tide arose in the soul. From the study of the Latin writers, the humanitarians proclaimed, with transport, how much there had been of the beautiful and the grand in the ancient world. Eagerly did they maintain the treasure of noble feelings, which had fallen on their souls from the distant past, against the coarse or corrupt life that they beheld around them. With the holy book in their hands, pious ecclesiastics contended for the words of Scripture, against the despotism of Rome and the false traditions of the Church. By thousands of books written by themselves, they raised the consciences of the people, for the greatest spiritual struggle that had ever taken place since the Star of Bethlehem had appeared to the human race; and again through thousands of books, after the first victory, they consecrated anew for their people all earthly relations, the duties and rights of men, of the family, and of the governing powers, as the first educators and teachers of the great multitude. But it was not the pleasure derived from the ancient poets and statues, nor the mighty struggle which was carried on concerning the teaching of the Church, nor the theologians and the philologists of the sixteenth century, that were the greatest blessings bestowed by the new art; it is not they alone that have given richness to thought, and security to judgment, and made love and hatred greater. This was brought about in yet another way--through the medium of types and woodcuts; slowly, imperceptibly, to contemporaries, but to us wonderfully.