ion of the materials, printed on their own account, and, within
eighteen months of their separation from Gutenberg, produced the
celebrated Latin Psalter of 1457, the first book in any country which
bears a complete imprint--that is, the name of the printer, place, and
date. This magnificent volume, of which the whole edition was printed on
vellum, is now even rarer than the Mazarin Bible, and of extraordinary
value; the letters are very large and bold, cast in metal type, and the
ornamental initials are beautifully cut in wood.

Two years later, that is, in 1459, Faust and Schoeffer produced an
almost fac-simile reprint of the Psalter, and in the same year _Durandi
Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, the latter with an entirely new font of
metal type--the first cast from Schoeffer's punches--which some, in the
erroneous belief that the Psalter was printed from wooden types, have
asserted to be the first dated book printed with metal type. Then
followed, in 1460, the _Constitutiones Clementis V_, a handsome folio,
and in 1462 their famous Latin Bible, the first one with a date.

In the mean time, Gutenberg, undaunted by the loss of all that had cost
him so many years of unremitted application and his whole fortune, began
afresh; and this time, it should seem, with better success, as we find
him, in 1459, undertaking to present, for certain considerations, all the
books he had then printed, or might thereafter print, to a convent where
his sister was a nun. No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing
the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by
a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked
is the famous _Catholicon_, dated 1460--a kind of universal dictionary,
the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that
more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years. In 1465
Gutenberg retired from printing, being appointed to a lucrative office at
the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, and in 1467 he died.

And here we take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience,
his perseverance, and his self-sacrifice in a cause which has produced
such glorious fruits. He was one of those noble spirits who are endowed
with a perception of what is good, and pursue it independent of worldly
considerations. Posterity has done him tardy justice in erecting a marble
monument to his memory and establishing a jubilee, which gave rise to one
of the mo