attributed the introduction of full stops and commas. The same care presided over the preparation of royal charters and diplomas; the referendaries or chancellors drew them up and superintended their despatch; the principal officers of the crown intervened, as guarantors or witnesses to them, and these acts were read publicly before they were signed and sealed. Notaries and witnesses guaranteed the authenticity of private charters. As long as printing did not exist in France, the corporation of scribes, copyists of charters, and copyists of manuscripts, which counted among them booksellers, was very numerous and very influential, since it was composed of graduates of the university that patronised them and placed them among the number of its indispensable agents. He who desired to become a bookseller had to give proof of his instruction and of his ability; he was obliged to take an oath “not to commit any deception, fraud, or evil thing which might damage or prejudice the university, its scholars and frequenters, nor to rob nor speak ill of them.” Besides which he was compelled to deposit a sum of fifty francs (_livres parisis_) as caution-money. The rules imposed on scribes and on booksellers were always very strict, and this severity was only too justly occasioned by the abuses that existed, and by the scandalous disorder of the people who exercised these professions. In the year 1324 the university published this order:--“There will be admitted only people of good conduct and morals, sufficiently acquainted with the book trade, and previously approved by the university. The bookseller may not take a clerk into his service till that clerk has sworn, before the university, to exercise his profession according to the ordinances. The bookseller must give to the university a list of the works which he sells; he must not refuse to let a manuscript to whomsoever may wish to make a copy of it, on payment of the indemnity fixed by the university. He is forbidden to let out books that have not been corrected, and those students who find an incorrect copy are requested to denounce it publicly to the rector, so that the bookseller who has let it out may be punished, and that the copy may be corrected by _scholares_ (learned men or scholars). There shall be every year four commissioners chosen to fix the price of books. One bookseller shall not sell a work to another bookseller before he has exposed the work for sale during four days. In any case the seller is obliged to register the name of the purchaser, to describe him, and to state the price for which the book was sold.”