This pale rusty WORD-STAMPING on the fragile and easily combustible paper, has outlasted the inscriptions once visible in gigantic characters on the four sides of the Memphitic pyramids; and it is only an incidental result of the intelligence diffused and the learning promoted by the invention thus begun, that we can now read the long-buried records of Nineveh, the epitaphs of the Thebaic kings, and the gravings on the precipitous fronts of the mountains which surround the ruins of Persepolis. All writers upon this subject have strangely overlooked the fact that the art of impressing or printing letters with a metallic stamp or type on parchment, as a substitute for pen-work, is about a thousand years older than the period above specified as the date of the invention of the modern art of printing. The CODEX ARGENTEUS, (the oldest translation of the entire Bible into any European language,) is a famous book, in the Library of the University of Upsala in Sweden. (We give the particulars of its history in our Appendix.) This “antique” is on purple _vellum_, (which is parchment made of _calf-skin_,) and all the letters are SILVER, (whence the name Codex Argenteus, the “silver book,”) manifestly impressed on the page by a metallic stamp or type, each letter evidently being on a separate stock or handle, and applied by manual pressure. We give a specimen of this style of work. It may be called printing, but can not be denominated _manuscript_, for that is (literally) “hand-writing,” which this certainly is not. In our Appendix may be found still earlier instances of this art as practiced by the ancient Romans on a small scale, in signatures, trade-marks, &c. The Edinburgh review refers to Pliny and Dioscorides, as furnishing directions for the manufacture of ink. The Edinburgh reviewer says “receipts,”—not recognizing the broad distinction between a _receipt_ and a _recipe_. The former of these two words was originally intended to convey the idea that the person who signs the paper has _got_ something: the latter word, or its representative initial (℞) means simply, “_take_.” The directions of Pliny are in the following words:— C. Plinii Secundi Historia Naturalis. Lib. XXXV, §25. _ATRAMENTUM._