ble type.
Nevertheless, the principle of the art was developed in the sacristy of
Haarlem, and we might hesitate whether to attribute the honor of it to
Koster or Gutenberg, if its invention had not been with one the mere
accidental discovery of love and chance, and, in the other, the
well-earned victory of patience and genius.

At the sight of this coarse plank, the lightning from heaven flashed
before the eyes of Gutenberg. He looked at the plank, and, in his
imagination, analyzed it, decomposed it, put it together again, changed
it, divided it, readjusted it, reversed it, smeared it with ink, placed
the parchment on it, and pressed it with a screw. The sacristan,
wondering at his long silence, was unwittingly present at this
development of an idea over which his visitor had brooded in vain for
the last ten years. When Gutenberg retired, he carried a new art with
him.

On the morrow, like a man who possesses a treasure, and knows neither
rest nor sleep until he has hidden it safely, Gutenberg left Haarlem,
hastened up the Rhine until he reached Strasburg, shut himself up in his
work-room, fashioned his own tools, tried, broke, planned, rejected,
returned to his plans, and again rejected them, only to return to them
again; and ended by secretly executing a fortunate proof upon parchment
with movable wooden types, bored through the side with a small hole,
strung together and kept close by a thread, like square beads on a
chaplet, each with a letter of the alphabet cut in relief on one
side--the first printer's alphabet, coarse, but wonderful--the first
company of twenty-four letters, which multiplied like the herds of the
patriarchs, until at last they covered the whole earth with written
characters, in which a new and immaterial element--human thought--became
incarnate.

Gutenberg, perceiving at the first glance the immense social and
industrial bearing of his invention, felt that his weak hand, short
life, and moderate property would be spent in vain on such a work. He
experienced two opposite wants--the necessity of associating with
himself persons to assist in meeting the expenses and in executing the
mechanical labor, and the necessity of concealing from his assistants
the secret and real object of their labors, for fear lest his invention
might be divulged and pirated, and the glory and merit of his discovery
taken from him. He cast his eyes on the nobility and rich gentry of his
acquaintance at Strasburg and