The princely patrons of literature, the learned doctors of the universities, the copyists and stationers, the illuminators and miniaturists, must have seen the playing cards and prints then sold in all large cities, and, to some extent, must have known the process by which they were made. But they looked on them with a pitying contempt for the coarse tastes which could be satisfied with such rude workmanship. The distance in degrees of merit between printed playing cards and finely illuminated manuscript books seemed infinite. If the cards conveyed a suggestion of the possibility of printed books, the suggestion was rejected. To the dainty tastes of book-makers printing was a barbarous trade; to the wealthy book-buyer, a printed book would have been the degradation of art and literature. One may look in vain among the book-makers and scholars of the fourteenth century for any sign that heralded the coming of printing. Makers and buyers of books seem to have been fully satisfied with things as they were—with the established methods of book-making, with the organization of society and the state of education. And the professed patrons of literature would have been forever satisfied with this state of affairs. Under their exclusive patronage, books would have been made more and more sumptuously, and put more and more out of the reach of the people. [p171] X The Preparations for Printing. Imperfect Preparation of the People of Southern Europe . . . Repression of Education in England. Early Gropings after Knowledge by English People . . . The Horn-Book and Clog . . . Injurious Effects of the Use of Latin in Books . . . Beginnings of Common Schools . . . Their Usefulness in Germany and Flanders . . . Indications of Mental Activity in the Arts . . . Favorable Condition of Germany as Compared with other States . . . Profligacy of the Clergy . . . Growth of Heresy . . . Early Translations of the Bible . . . Appreciation of Pictures by the Illiterate . . . The Dance of Death. Neglect of the People by their Constituted Teachers . . . Growing use of Paper . . . Increase of Self-taught Copyists . . . Guilds of Book-Makers in the North of Europe . . . Printing as an Aid to Writing . . . Printing Delayed by Considerations of Expense . . . Could not be Introduced until there were a Multitude of Readers . . . Books of Pictures preceded Books of Letters. * * * * * No great fact, no social state, makes its appearance complete and at once; it is formed slowly, successively; it is the result of a multitude of different facts of different dates and origins, which modify and combine themselves in a thousand ways before constituting a whole, presenting itself in a clear and a systematic form, receiving a special name, and standing through a long life. _Guizot._ * * * * *