taken apart
and used for another work.

The earliest surviving specimen of printing--not counting a few undated
letters of indulgence--is a fragment on the last judgment completed at
Mayence before 1447. In 1450 Gutenberg made a partnership with the
rich goldsmith John Fust, and from their press issued, within the next
five years, the famous Bible with 42 lines to a page, and a Donatus
(Latin grammar) of 32 lines. The printer of the Bible with 36 lines to
a page, that is the next oldest surviving monument, was apparently a
helper of Gutenberg, who set up an independent press in 1454. Legible,
clean-cut, comparatively cheap, these books demonstrated once for all
the success of the new art, even though, for illuminated initials, they
were still dependent on the hand of the scribe.

[Sidenote: Books and Reading]

In those days before patents the new invention spread with wonderful
rapidity, reaching Italy in 1465, Paris in 1470, London in 1480,
Stockholm in 1482, Constantinople in 1487, Lisbon in 1490, and Madrid
in 1499. Only a few backward countries of Europe remained without a
press. By the year 1500 the names of more than one thousand printers
are known, and the titles of about 30,000 printed works. Assuming that
the editions were small, averaging 300 copies, there would have been in
Europe by 1500 about 9,000,000 books, as against the few score thousand
manuscripts that lately had held all the precious lore of time. In a
few years the price of books sank to one-eighth of what it had been
before. "The gentle reader" had started on his career.

{10} The importance of printing cannot be over-estimated. There are
few events like it in the history of the world. The whole gigantic
swing of modern democracy and of the scientific spirit was released by
it. The veil of the temple of religion and of knowledge was rent in
twain, and the arcana of the priest and clerk exposed to the gaze of
the people. The reading public became the supreme court before whom,
from this time, all cases must be argued. The conflict of opinions and
parties, of privilege and freedom, of science and obscurantism, was
transferred from the secret chamber of a small, privileged,
professional, and sacerdotal coterie to the arena of the reading public.

[Sidenote: Exploration]

It is amazing, but true, that within fifty years after this exploit,
mankind should have achieved another like unto it in a widely different
sphere. The horror