last voice of the middle ages than the first voice of the Renaissance that speaks to us out of these clear, black, handsome pages that were pulled damp from the press four hundred and twenty-eight years ago on the fourth of last June. At first reading one is moved to mirth, then to wonder, then perhaps to disgust, but last of all to the haunting melancholy of Omar the tent-maker when he sings "When you and I behind the veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last." As to worthy Hartman Schedel, God rest his soul, one wonders whether he has yet learned that Columbus discovered America. He had not yet heard of it when he finished his book, though Columbus had returned to Spain three months before. O most lame and impotent conclusion! But the fifteenth century, though it had an infinite childlike curiosity, had no nose for news. Nuremberg nodded peacefully on while a new world loomed up beyond the seas, and studied Michael Wolgemut's picture of Noah building the ark while Columbus was fitting out the Santa Maria for a second voyage. Such is mankind, blind and deaf to the greatest things. We know not the great hour when it strikes. We are indeed most enthralled by the echoing chimes of the romantic past when the future sounds its faint far-off reveille upon our unheeding ears. The multitude understands noon and night; only the wise man understands the morning. [Illustration] And now finally, what of William Caxton? The father of English printing had been for many years an English merchant residing in Bruges when his increasing attention to literature led him to acquire the new art of printing. He had already translated from the French the Histories of Troy, and was preparing to undertake other editorial labors when he became associated with Colard Mansion, a Bruges printer. From Mansion he learned the art and presumably purchased his first press and type. Six books bearing Caxton's imprint were published at Bruges between 1474 and 1476, though it is possible that the actual printing was done by Mansion rather than by Caxton himself. In 1476 Caxton set up the first printing shop in England, in a house within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. Between that date and his death in 1491 he printed ninety-three separate works, some of these in several editions. His industry and scholarly zeal as a publisher somewhat exceeded his technical skill as a printer. Caxton's books, which are now much rarer than those of many continental printers of the same period, are not so finely and beautifully done as the best of theirs. But the peculiar interest of his work lies in the striking variety of the works he chose for publication, the conscientious zeal with which he conceived and performed his task, and the quiet humor of his prefaces and notes. Let me illustrate briefly these three points. First, his variety. We have observed that Aldus and Froben published chiefly the Latin and Greek classics, Koberger the