to important resolves. If a few arbitrarily arranged signs on bits of paper could greatly amuse a party of friends during a long evening, would not the letters of the alphabet as they were combined in books, furnish a still greater and an unfailing source of amusement?

The meagre notices of card-makers and card-painters in old town-books of Germany and in the decree of Venice do not tell us whether cards were made before or after image prints. Those who have written most learnedly on this subject,1 tell us that the cards were made before the images; that at first they were drawn and painted by hand; that they were afterward colored by stencils; that when this method was found too slow, blocks were engraved and printed; and that the image prints were subsequently introduced for the purpose of counteracting the evil influences of cards. These propositions are ingenious, but it must be confessed that we have no certain knowledge that the improvement was made in this order. This theory of gradual development is based on conjecture, and its best support is derived from a consideration of the fact that cards were in common use before we have any indications of the existence of image prints. That the cards should have been made by engraving before the images seems reasonable when we consider that the workmanship of the cards was of a much ruder nature. The experimenting amateur who knew that he was unable to cut a block like that of the St. Christopher, would readily undertake to engrave the spots and face figures of the earlier cards.

Breitkopf, an expert type-founder and a writer of authority, stands almost alone in his opinion that playing cards were

Having visited many convents in Franconia, Suabia, Bavaria, and the Austrian States, I everywhere discovered in their libraries many image prints engraved on wood and pasted either in the beginning or the end of old volumes of the fifteenth century. These facts taken together confirm me in the opinion that the next step of the engraver on wood, after playing cards, was the engraving

of figures of saints, which, distributed and lost among the laity, were carefully preserved by the monks, who pasted them on the inner covers of the books with which they furnished their libraries. After the engravers had succeeded in making prints of saints, they found it very easy to engrave historical subjects, with explanations in words. Heineken, Idée générale, etc., p. 251.

made after the image prints. He says that the engravers who made cards also made images, and he adds the curious fact that in some places cards and images were called by the same name.1

The curt and careless manner in which the business of card-making is mentioned in the old records is an indication that the process used was not novel. We do not find in the writings of any author of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries a statement that the earliest playing cards were made by a new art. That they were made by block - printing at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Italy and Germany seems clearly established. That they were made at a corresponding period in Spain and France, where cards were as common, cannot be proved. It is probable that the Germans derived their knowledge of cards from Italy, but the evidences of an early manufacture by printing are decidedly in favor of southern Germany, a district in which the most famous image prints have been found, and which, at a later period, was the birthplace of many eminent engravers on wood.

1 Wood-cuts of sacred subjects were known to the common people of Suabia, and the adjacent districts, by the name of Halgen or Halglein, saints or little saints, a word which, in course of time, was also applied to prints of all kinds. In France also, the earliest prints were known as dominos, or lords, a word which was intended to convey the same

meaning. The maker of prints w was known as a dominotier, whether he made profane cards or pious images. In time the word so far declined from its first meaning that it was applied not only to printers of cards and images, but to the makers of fancifully colored wall-papers. Versuch den Ursprung der Spielkarten, etc., vol. II, p. 174.

VI

The Chinese Method of Printing.

Antiquity of Printing among the Chinese...Statement of Du Halde...Its Perversion...First Chinese Method, the Gouging of Letters...Didot's Hypothesis...Second Method, of Xylography... Third Method, a Combination of Xylography and Typography... A Peculiarly Chinese Invention. Method now used...Its Advantages over Types...Chinese Paper... Performance of Pressmen. Curious Method of Binding... Expense of Engraving no hindrance to Chinese Printing... The Xylographic Method necessary... Chinese Practice in Typography... Cheapness of Chinese Books...Similarity between the Chinese and the European Methods of Block - Printing... The Hypothesis of its Transmission to Europe through Marco Polo, or other Venetian Travelers.

In both arts, writing and printing alike, the Chinese habe remained stiff, stolid, and immobable at the first step, with the characteristic unchangeability of the pellow races of Eastern Asia.

MA

D. F. Bacon.

ANY eminent authors are of the opinion that we are indebted to China not only for playing cards, but for the means of making them. They tell us that playing cards could not have been popular, as they were at the beginning of the fifteenth century, if they had not been made by a cheaper process than drawing by hand. The inference attempted is that block-printing and playing cards were brought to Europe together. The reasons presented in support of this opinion are far from conclusive, but they are based on many curious facts which deserve consideration.

The Chinese claims for priority in the practice of block printing have been disallowed by some critics, chiefly because they have been presented in the form of perverted translations. That oriental people practised printing before this art was applied to any useful purpose in Europe is admitted by all who have studied their history. Du Halde, a learned Jesuit father, who traveled in China during the earlier part of the

eighteenth century, was the first author who furnished Europeans with a description of Chinese printing. He quotes the following extract from a Chinese book, supposed to have been written in the reign of the emperor Wu-Wong, who was living I120 B. C. "As the stone me (Chinese for blacking), which is used to blacken the engraved characters, can never become white, so a heart blackened by vices will always retain its blackness." This is an allusion to some primitive method of blackening incised characters, for the purpose of making them more legible. It is a method which is still observed in the inscriptions on memorial stones in churches and graveyards. But it is an allusion to engraving and blackening only. There is no mention of printing ink, and no suggestion of printing. Du Halde quoted it only to show the antiquity of engraving, yet it has been used by many authors as a warrant for the assertion that printing was practised in China eleven hundred years before the Christian era. If we could accept this statement, we should have to believe that printing was invented in China but a few years after the siege of Troy, before Rome was founded, before Homer wrote and Solomon reigned. Du Halde's words do not warrant this statement. He says, with due caution, "In printing, it seemeth that China ought to have the precedence of other nations, for, according to their books, the Chinese have made use of this art for sixteen hundred years," or since the first century.

The practice of blackening characters was not printing, but it may have led to its development. Du Halde says that the Chinese printed not only on wood blocks, but on tables of "stone of a proper and particular kind." The writing or design to be printed, while it was still wet with ink, was transferred by pressure from the paper upon which it was written to the smooth surface of a slab of stone. When the

A

'This method is still in use in many parts of the East Indies. dried leaf is written on with a pointed steel which scratches the smooth surface. A bit of charcoal is then

rubbed over the leaf; the places scratched are filled with atoms of charcoal, which make the writing as legible as it would have been if written with fluid ink.

black lines of the writing or design were firmly set on the stone, the paper was peeled off. The black transferred lines. were then cut out, or cut below the surface, as they are now done in the copper-plate process. The surface was inked, paper was laid on the stone, and an impression was taken. The result was, the appearance on the paper of the writing or design in white on a field of solid black. This method of cutting out the lines, so that they should appear white in the printed impression, is the simplest form of engraving. It is like that of the boy who cuts his name in the bark of a tree. He finds it easier to gouge out the letters than it is to raise them in high relief. Reasoning from probability, we should say that it should have been the earliest of the methods. Didot believes that it was known to the old Romans.1 Du Halde says that this method of printing on stone was used chiefly for "epitaphs, pictures, trees, mountains and such like things." He does not fix the date of its invention, but it was probably the earlier method.

Didot says that he had in his

'In support of this opinion he the images of seven hundred illustrious quotes the following from Pliny:

It would be improper to omit the notice of a new invention. We have been accustomed to preserve in our libraries, in gold, silver, or bronze, the personages whose immortal spirits speak to us from distances of leagues and centuries. We create statues of those who are no longer living. Our regrets invest them with features which have not been given to us by tradition, as, for example, is shown in the bust of Homer. The idea of making a collection of these portraits is due to Asinius Pollio, who was the first to throw open his library, and to make these men of genius the property of the public. That the love for portraits has always existed is sufficiently proven by Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who published a book on the subject, and also by Marcus Varro, who had the enlarged idea of inserting in his numerous books not only the names, but, by the aid of a certain invention,

persons. Varro wished to save their
features from oblivion, so that the length
of centuries would not prevail against
them. As the inventor of a benefit
which will fill even the gods with jeal-
immortality. He has made them known
he has clothed these persons with
ousy,
over the wide world, so that everywhere
one can see them as if they were present.
Pliny, book XXXV, chap. II.

This invention has never been clearly explained. A new invention, which exhibited in books the features of seven hundred men, which multiplied them so that they were known over the wide world, and preserved them for posterity, should have been the invention of printing. Pliny speaks of it as a well-known fact, but no other writer of his age makes any mention of it. Why did not Pliny describe the new art instead of praising it?