INVENTION OF THE PRINTING-PRESS. T HE use of carved blocks for the multiplication of copies of playing-cards and devotional pictures gave birth to a principle which has effected, and is still effecting, the most important changes in the world. These devotional pictures had short legends or texts attached to them; and when a text had to be printed, it was engraved in a solid piece, as well as the picture. The first person who seized upon the idea that the text or legend might be composed of separate letters capable of rearrangement after the impressions were taken off, so as to be applied, without new cutting, to other texts and legends, had secured the principle upon which the printing art was to depend. It was easy to extend the principle from a few lines to a whole page, and from one page to many, so as to form a book; but then were seen the great labor and expense of cutting so many separate letters upon small pieces of wood or metal, and another step was required to be made before the principle was thoroughly worked out. This step consisted in the ready multiplication of the separate letters by casting metal in moulds. Lastly, instead of using the old Chinese mode of friction to produce impressions, a press was to be perfected. All these gradations were undoubtedly the result of long and patient experiments carried on by several individuals who each saw the importance of the notion they were laboring to work out. It is this circumstance which has given rise to the interminable controversies as to the inventors of printing, some claiming the honor for Coster of Haarlem, and some for Guttenberg of Mentz; and, as is usual in all such disputes, it was represented that the man to whom public opinion had assigned the credit of the invention had stolen it from another, who, as is also usual in these cases, thought of it in a dream or received it by some other mysterious revelation. The general consent of Europe now assigns the chief honor to Guttenberg. During the summer of 1837 a statue of John Guttenberg by Thorwaldsen was erected at Mentz (or Mayence), and on the 14th of August and the following days a festival was held there, upon the occasion of the inauguration of the monument. Abundant evidence has been brought forward of late years to show that Guttenberg deserves all the honors of having conceived, and in great part perfected, an art which has produced the most signal effects upon the destinies of mankind. At that festival of Mentz—at which many hundred persons were assembled from all parts of Europe to do honor to the inventor of printing-no rival pretensions were put forward, although many of the compatriots of Coster of Haarlem were present. The fine statue of Guttenberg was opened amidst a universal burst of enthusiasm. Never were the shouts of a vast multitude raised on a more elevating occasion-never were the triumphs of intellect celebrated with greater fervor. It was computed that at least fifteen thousand strangers had arrived to do honor to the first printer. The modes in which a large population displays its enthusiasm are pretty much the same throughout the world. If the sentiment which collects men together be very heart-stirring, all the outward manifestations of the sentiment harmonize with its real truth. Thus processions and orations and public dinners and pageantries which in themselves are vain and empty are important when the persons whom they collect together have one common feeling which for the time is allpervading. We never saw such a popular fervor as prevailed at Mentz at the festival of August, 1837. The statue was to be opened on Monday, the 14th, but on the Sunday evening the name of Guttenberg was rife through all the streets. In the morning all Mentz was in motion by six o'clock, and at eight a procession was formed to the cathedral, which, if it was not much more imposing than some of the processions of trades in London and other cities, was conducted with a quiet precision which evidenced that the people felt they were engaged in a solemn act. The fine old cathedral was crowded. The bishop of Mentz performed high mass; the first Bible printed by Gut tenberg was displayed. The procession again advanced to the adjacent square, where the statue was to be opened. Here was erected a vast amphitheatre, where, seated under their respective banners, were deputations from all the great cities of Europe. Amidst salvos of artillery the veil was removed from the statue and a hymn was sung by a thousand voices. Then came orations, then dinners, ball, oratorios, boat-races, processions by torchlight. For three days the population of Mentz was kept in a state of high excitement, and the echo of the excitement went through Germany. "Guttenberg! Guttenberg!" was toasted in many a bumper of Rhenish wine amidst this cordial and enthusiastic people. And, indeed, even in one who could not boast of belonging to the land in which printing was invented, the universality of the mighty effects of this art, when rightly considered, would produce almost a corresponding enthusiasm. It is difficult to look upon the great changes that have been effected during the last four centuries, and which are still in progress everywhere around us, and not connect them with printing and with its inventor. The castles on the Rhine, under whose ruins we travelled back from Mentz, perished before the powerful combinations of the people of the towns; the petty feudal despots fell when the burghers had acquired wealth and knowledge; but the progress of despotism upon a larger scale could not have been arrested had the art of Guttenberg not been discovered. The strongholds of military power still frown over the same majestic river. The Rhine has seen its pretty fortresses crumble into decay; Ehrenbreitstein is more strong than ever, but even Ehrenbreitstein will fall before the power of mind. The Rhine is crowded with steamboats where the feudal lord once levied tribute upon the frail bark of the fisherman, and the approaches to the Rhine from all Germany and from France and Belgium have become a great series of railroads. Such communications will make war a game much more difficult to play; and TIME. CHARLES KNIGHT. when mankind are thoroughly civilized, it | any abstract common measure by which the will never be played again. Seeing, then, infinite variety of intellectual acts can be what intellect has done and is doing, we may meted, any real passage of years which is well venerate the memory of Guttenberg of the same to all, any periodical revolution Mentz in which all who have lived have lived out equal hours? Is chronology any other than a fable, a "tale that is told"? Certain outward visible actions have passed and certain seasons have rolled over them, but has the common idea of time as applicable to these any truth higher or surer than those infinite varieties of duration which have been felt by each single heart? Who shall truly count the measure of his own days, much more scan the real life of the millions around him? BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT "WE E know what we are," said poor แ Ophelia, "but we know not what we may be." Perhaps she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy had she said, 'We know what we have been." Of our present state we can, strictly speaking, know nothing. The act of meditation on ourselves, however quick and subtle, must refer to the past, in which alone we can truly be said to live. Even in the moments of intensest enjoyment our pleasures are multiplied by the quick-revolving images of thought; we feel the past and future in each fragment of the instant even as the flavor of every drop of some delicious liquid is heightened and prolonged on the lips. It is the past only which we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible of duration. Each bygone instant of delight becomes rapidly present to us and "bears a glass which shows us many more. This is the great privilege of a meditative being never properly to have any sense of the present, but to feel the great realities as they pass away, casting their delicate shadows on the future. Time, then, is only a notion unfelt in its passage—a mere measure given by the mind to its own past emotions. Is there, then, The ordinary language of moralists respecting time shows that we really know nothing respecting it. They say that life is fleeting and short; why, humanly speaking, may they not as well affirm that it is extended and lasting? The words "short" and "long" have meaning only when used comparatively, and to what can we compare or liken this our human existence? The images of fragility-thin vapors, delicate flowers and shadows cast from the most fleeting things-which we employ as emblems of its transitoriness really serve to exhibit its durability as great in comparison with their own. If life is short compared with the age of some fine animals, how much longer is it than that of many some of whom pass through all the varieties of youth, maturity and age during a few hours, according to man's reckoning, and, if they are endowed with memory, look back on their early minutes through the long vista of a summer's day? An antediluvia. shepherd might complain with as much apparent reason of the brevity of his nine hundred years as we of our threescore and ten; he would find as little to confute or to establish his theory. There is nothing visible by which we can fairly reckon the measure of our lives. It is not just to compare them with the duration of rocks and hills which have withstood "a thousand storms, a thousand thunders," because where there is no consciousness there is really no time. The power of imagination supplies to us the place of ages. We have thoughts which "date beyond the pyramids." Antiquity spreads around us her mighty wings. We live centuries in contemplation and have all the sentiment of six thousand years in our memories: "The wars we too remember of King Nine, And old Assaracus and Ibycus divine." membrance may serve to explain some apparent inconsistencies in the language which we use respecting our sense of its passage. We hear persons complaining of the slow passage of time when they have spent a single night of unbroken wearisomeness, and wondering how speedily hours filled with pleasure or engrossing occupations have flown, and yet we all know how long any period seems which has been crowded with events. or feelings leaving a strong impression behind them. In thinking on seasons of ennui we have nothing but a sense of length: we merely remember that we felt the tedium of existence; but there is really no space in the imagination filled up by the period. Mere time unpeopled with diversified emotions or circumstances is but one idea, and that idea is nothing more than the remembrance of a Whence, then, the prevalent feeling of the listless sensation. A night of dull pain and brevity of our life? Not, assuredly, from its months of lingering weakness are in the retcomparison with anything which is presented rospect nearly the same thing. When our to our senses. It is only because the mind is hands or our hearts are busy, we know nothformed for eternity that it feels the shortness ing of time: it does not exist for us; but as of its earthly sojourn. Seventy years, or sev- soon as we pause to meditate on that which enty thousand, or seven, shared as the com- is gone we seem to have lived long, because mon lot of a species, would seem alike suffi- we look back through a long series of events cient to those who had no sense within them or feel them at once peering one above the of a being which should have no end. When other like ranges of distant hills. Actions this sense has been weakened as it was amidst or feelings, not hours, mark all the backward all the exquisite forms of Grecian mythology, course of our being. Our sense of the nearthe brevity of life has been forgotten. There ness to us of any circumstance in our life is is scarcely an allusion to this general senti- determined on the same principles-not by ment, so deep a spring of the pathetic, through- the revolution of the seasons, but by the out all the Greek tragedies. It will be found relation which the event bears in importalso to prevail in individuals in proportion as ance to all that has happened to us since. they meditate on themselves or as they nurse To him who has thought or done or suffered in solitude and silence the instinct of the much the level days of his childhood seem at eternal. an immeasurable distance-far off as the age The doctrine that time exists only in re- of chivalry or as the line of Sesostris. There |