At this critical period, when the art was reaching its zenith, the operations of the Mainz printers were suddenly brought to a standstill by the siege and capture of the city in 1462. The occasion of this was a fierce dispute between the Pope and the people as to who had the right of appointment to the archbishopric, lately become vacant. The original hive of workmen dispersed to other states, and by degrees the mysteries of the art became spread over the civilized world. Such, indeed, was the fame printing had acquired, and its manifest importance, that every crowned head sought to introduce it into his kingdom, and welcomed the fugitives. Within a few years of this period the art had been carried by the scattered German workmen into Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland; and before the close of the fifteenth century it was practised in more than two hundred twenty different places. Before entering upon the history of printing in England, I will take leave to call your attention to a few prominent facts connected with its progress abroad, as well as to some points of its early condition which could not be conveniently introduced in chronological order. All the books printed previously to 1465 are in the Gothic, or black letter, which still remained the favorite in Germany and the Low Countries long after the Italians introduced their beautiful Roman letter. The first books in which any Greek type occurs are Cicero's _Offices_, printed by Faust and Schoeffer in 1465, directly after the resumption of their establishment; and _Lactantius_, printed the same year by Sweynheim and Pannartz, in the monastery of Soubiaco at Rome. The first book printed entirely in Greek was Constantine Lascar's _Greek Grammar_, Milan, 1476.