Writing once learned, and alphabets once formulated, the machinery for making books, with the human mind as its mainspring, was fairly in motion. "Certainly the Art of Writing," says Carlyle, "is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.... With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced." That these words only express the feeling of our far away ancestors, a cursory glance into the mythology of various peoples will prove. For wherever there is a tradition respecting writing, that tradition almost invariably, if not always, connects the great invention with the gods or with some sacred person. The Egyptians attributed it to Thoth, the Babylonians and Assyrians to Nebo, the Buddhists to Buddha, the Greeks to Hermes. The Scandinavians honoured Odin as the first cutter of the mysterious runes, and the Irish derived their ogham from the sacred Ogma of the Tuatha de Danaan. And it is noteworthy how, from time immemorial, writing, and the making of books, have been considered high and honourable accomplishments, and how closely they have ever been connected with the holy functions of priesthood. * * * * * =Materials for Writing and Books.=--The early forms of books were various, and, to modern eyes, more or less clumsy. Wood or bark was one of the oldest substances used to receive writing. Stone was no doubt older still, but stone inscriptions are outside our subject. The early Greeks and Romans employed tablets of soft metal, and wooden leaves coated with wax, when they had anything to write, impressing the characters with a stilus. Thus Pausanius relates that he saw the original copy of Hesiod's _Works and Days_ written on leaden tablets. The wooden leaves, when bound together at one side, foreshadowed the form of book which is now almost universal, and were called by the Romans _caudex_, or _codex_ (originally meaning a tree-stump), in distinction to the _volumen_, which was always a parchment or papyrus roll. The oldest manuscript in existence, however, is on papyrus, which, as is well known, was the chief writing-material of the ancient world. Although the discovery that skins of animals, when properly prepared, formed a convenient and durable writing-material, was made at a very early date, the papyrus held its own as the writing-material of literary Egypt, Greece, and Rome, until about the fourth or fifth century of our era.