aphaelitism._ By the author of _Modern Painters_.

A LEGEND OF AMEN-CORNER.

About the time that every prince in Europe was sending a special
embassy to London, to congratulate James I. on his book against
witchcraft, which none of them ever professed to have read, a strange
occurrence happened in an ancient house, situated in the Amen-Corner
of Paternoster Row. Like most of the houses of old London, its lower
half was brick, and its upper, English oak. It had been built in the
time of the first Tudor, but, being still a substantial tenement, was
purchased some ten years before the period of this narrative, by two
brothers named Christopher and Hubert, who carried on their business
there. They were of English blood, but had been born in Germany, their
grandfather having fled thither in Queen Mary's day under strong
suspicion of owning a Coverdale Bible; and in the good city of
Augsburg his son and grandsons had been brought up to his own craft,
then known as the singular art and mystery of printing. A separate and
a thinly-scattered guild was that of the printer in those days. Their
craft had nothing in common with the world's older arts, excepting
those of the scribe and the scholar. The entire book-trade, now
divided into so many branches, was in their hands--binder, engraver,
printer and publisher, being generally the same person; and this,
together with the laborious precision required in working the
primitive press, made them throughout Christendom a sort of caste who
acquired their trade by inheritance, and kept it as such. Two
generations of their family had transmitted the types to Christopher
and Hubert; but not to them alone. There had been an elder brother,
Gottleib, who printed with them at Augsburg. Their mother had died
early: the plague summoned their father when they were little more
than boys, and the man grieved sore to leave his sons so young, and an
edition of the Latin Fathers, which he had calculated on finishing in
five years with great praise and profit, just begun; but Gottleib
promised him that he would finish the work in his name, and take care
of his young brothers till they were old enough to be expert and
prudent printers; so the old man died in peace.

Gottleib was the glory of his craft, and the praise of all Augsburg.
Throughout Germany there was not a more skilful printer, nor in the
city a more wise and virtuous youth. Old men asked his help in their
difficulties, the young