The natural result, moreover, of this decline was, in the following century, followed by what practically amounts to extinction; and the few exceptions to which we shall refer, and which are to some extent selected at random, prove the truth of that theory. Thomas Creede, 1588-1618, whose shop was at the sign of the Catherine Wheel, near the Old Swan in Thames Street, was one of the prolific printers of the period, and his most common Mark is a personification of Truth, with a hand issuing from the clouds striking on her back with a rod, and encircled with the motto, “Veritas virescit vulnere.” Among the numerous books which he printed was Henry Butte’s “Digets Dry Dinner,” 1599, for William Wood, a bookseller whose shop was at the sign of Time, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and whose Mark was an almost exact copy of one employed by Conrad Bade, a sixteenth century printer of Paris and Geneva (who had apparently adopted his from that of Knoblouch of Strassburg, which we give on another page): it represents a winged figure of Time helping a naked woman out of what appears to be a cave, with the motto, “Tempore patet occulata veritas”; this Mark follows the introductory matter in the above-named work. Making a leap of over half a century, we come across another ambitious Mark, which in the present instance served the additional purpose of a frontispiece; it was employed by John Allen of the Rising Sun, St. Paul’s Churchyard, and is dated 1656; it is rather a fine device of the sun rising behind the hills, with a cathedral on the left-hand side, and the inscription “Ipswiche” and a coat-of-arms, apparently of that city. Although not exactly a printer’s or publisher’s Mark, the charming little plate, engraved by Clark, which John Walthoe, Jr., inserted on the title-page of “The Hive: a collection of the most celebrated Songs,” 1724, is sufficiently near it to be worth reproducing here. T. Cox, a bookseller of “The Lamb,” under the Royal Exchange, Cornhill, was fortunate enough to have a Mark (see page 46), in which John Pine is seen at his best: Cox was not only an eminent bookseller, but was also an exchange-broker. Of much less delicate workmanship, but appropriate nevertheless, is the Mark which we find on the title-pages of the books printed for R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun in Warwick Lane, one of whose books, Dr. Warren’s “Impartial Churchman,” 1728, contains at the end of the first chapter another Mark, an exceedingly rough sketch of a printing-office, with the motto, “vitam mortuis reddo.” On books intended more or less for particular schools, the Printer’s Mark usually takes the shape of the arms of the schools themselves, as in the case of Westminster and Eton; and the same may be said of books printed at Oxford and Cambridge, in the former case a very fine view of the Sheldonian Theatre usually appearing on the title-page of books printed there. John Scolar is an interesting figure among the