If we study with some attention the documents relating to this singular trial at Strasbourg, and if we also notice, that our word _mirror_ is the translation of the German word _spiegel_ and of the Latin word _speculum_, it is impossible not to recognise all the processes, all the implements made use of in printing, with the names they have not ceased to bear, and which were given to them as soon as they were invented; the forms, the screw (which is not the _printing_-press, for they printed in those days with the _frotton_, or rubber, but the frame in which the types were _pressed_), the lead, the work, the art, &c. We see Gutenberg accompanied by a turner who made the screw for the press, the timber merchant who had supplied the planks of box or of pear wood, the goldsmith who had engraved or cast the type. Then we ascertain that these “mirrors,” in the preparation of which the partners were occupied, and which were to be sold at the pilgrimage of Aix-la-Chapelle, were no other than the future copies of the “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,” an imitation more or less perfect of the famous book of illustrations of which Holland had already published three or four editions, in Latin and in Dutch. We know, on the other hand, that these “Mirrors” or “Specula” were, in the earliest days of printing, so much in request, that in every place the first printers rivalled each other in executing and publishing different editions of the book with illustrations. Here, there was the reprint of the “Speculum,” abridged by L. Coster; there, the “Speculum” of Gutenberg, taken entirely from manuscripts; now it was the “Speculum Vitæ Humanæ,” by Roderick, Bishop of Zamora; then the “Speculum Conscienciæ,” of Arnold Gheyloven; then the “Speculum Sacerdotum,” or again, the voluminous “Speculum” of Vincent de Beauvais, &c. It cannot now any longer be assumed that Gutenberg really made mirrors or looking-glasses at Strasbourg, and that those pieces “laid in a press,” those “forms which came to pieces,” that lead sold or wrought by a goldsmith, were, as they wished it to be supposed, only intended to be used “for printing ornaments on the frames of looking-glasses!” [Illustration: Fig. 394.--Interior of a Printing-office in the Sixteenth Century, by J. Amman.]