the society, Giestfacher, is now in jail for debt, he having failed to meet his obligations for the vellum he purchased when he took it into his head to enlighten mankind--more especially that portion of it that dwells on the Rhine adjacent to the city of Bonn--by distributing corrupt copies of Latin Bibles to poor people who are not well able to read their own language. The ‘good work’ still occupies the brains and energies of three or four enthusiasts, who have already arrived at the conclusion that the apostles were in league with hell to keep the people ignorant, because they did not give every man a copy of the Bible. The founder sent me a letter two days ago, in which he complains of being deserted by his companions in his extremity. His creditors have seized on all his goods, and there is a considerable sum yet unpaid. He blames the Pope and the bishop in unmeasured terms for this; says it is a conspiracy to keep the Bible from the people. He sees no prospect of being released unless the members of the society come to his speedy relief. The principles, he says, for which he suffers will yet triumph. The time will come when Bibles will be multiplied by some cheap and easy process. Until then, the common run of humanity must be satisfied to be damned, drawing what little consolation they may from the expectation that their descendants a few centuries hence will enjoy the slim privilege of reading Bibles prepared with as little regard to accuracy as these were. I am sorry to see such a noble intellect as Giestfacher undoubtedly possesses show signs of aberration. The entire failure of his project was more than he could bear. He had centred his hopes upon it. He indulged dreams of fame and greatness arising out of the triumph of his idea. Esch has become an atheist. He says the Christian’s God would not have given a book to be the guide and dependence of man for salvation, and yet allow nature, an inferior creation, to interpose insuperable barriers to its promulgation. Every time a sheep-skin is destroyed, says Esch, a community is damned. The dearness and scarcity of parchment keep the world in ignorance. Braunn says the world cannot be saved except by a special revelation to every individual, for there is hardly a copy of the Bible without errors, so that whether every human creature got one or not, they would be still unsafe. One of the common herd must learn Latin and Greek and Hebrew well, and then spend a lifetime tracing up, through all its changes, transcriptions, and corruptions of idiom, one chapter, or at most one book, and die before he be fully assured of the soundness of one text, a paragraph, a line, a word. In fact, says Braunn, there can be no certainty about anything. Language may have had altogether a different meaning twelve hundred years ago to what it has now. Braunn and Schwartz and myself wanted to have a committee of five of our number appointed to revise and correct the text of each book that was produced