give up the chase when these
gates close, though possibly with as little reason as the children of
the desert evince when they quietly succumb to any slight defence.]

[Footnote 31: They are small square blocks of metal, with the name in
raised letters within a border, precisely similar to those used by the
modern printer. Sometimes the stamp was round, or in the shape of a foot
or hand, with the potter's name in the centre. They were in constant use
for impressing the clay-works which supplied the wants of a Roman
household. The list of potters' marks found upon fragments discovered in
London alone amounts to several hundreds.]

[Footnote 32: Another reason for the omission of a great initial is
given. There was difficulty in obtaining such enriched letters by
engraving as were used in manuscripts; and there was at this time a
large number of professional scribes, whose interests were in some
degree considered by the printer. Hence we find in early books a large
space left to be filled in by the hand of the scribe with the proper
letter indicated by a small type letter placed in the midst. The famous
_Psalter_ printed by Faust and Scheffer, at Mentz, in 1497, is the first
book having large initial letters printed in red and blue inks, in
imitation of the handwork of the old caligraphers.]

[Footnote 33: The British Museum now possesses a remarkably fine series
of these early works. They originated in the large sheet woodcuts, or
"broadsides," representing saints, or scenes from saintly legends, used
by the clergy as presents to the peasantry or pilgrims to certain
shrines--a custom retained upon the Continent to the present time; such
cuts exhibiting little advance in art since the days of their origin,
being almost as rude, and daubed in a similar way with coarse colour.
One ancient cut of this kind in the British Museum, representing the
Saviour brought before Pilate, resembles in style the pen-drawings in
manuscripts of the fourteenth century. Another exhibits the seven stages
of human life, with the wheel of fortune in the centre. Another is an
emblematic representation of the Tower of Sapience, each stone formed of
some mental qualification. When books were formed, a large series of
such cuts included pictures and type in each page, and in one piece. The
so-called Poor Man's Bible (an evidently erroneous term for it, the
invention of a bibliographer of the last century) was one of these, and
consists of a series