the ancient corporation of Venetian painters, and communicated to the Count Algarotti. This decree, published in the Lettere Pittoriche, contains a favourable reply to a petition from the painters, praying the Venetian government to protect national industry, by prohibiting the introduction from foreign countries of playing-cards and printed figures (carte e figure stampade). The document in question bears the date of 1441, and proves that wood-engraving, whether as applied to playing-cards or to printed figures, formed then a staple part of Venetian industry, and was spread over Europe.

The art of taking off prints from wooden blocks engraved in relief, is the style that earliest prevailed in Europe. We have every reason to believe that it was first applied to purposes of devotion, in the execution of figures of saints and subjects drawn from sacred history. The outlines were rudely printed, and then the whole was daubed over with colours in such a manner as to present to an ordinary observer the appearance of a bad picture.

A recent discovery at Malines has put us in possession of a wood-cut, said to be dated 1418, thus establishing, if the date be genuine, a priority of five years over the St. Christopher, in Lord Spencer's collection, which had been hitherto classed as the earliest known print. In the month of October 1844, a cabaretier of Malines remarked an old print pasted inside the lid of a trunk, which he was about to destroy. M. de Noter, an architect belonging to the same city, was informed of the circumstance, and he succeeded in putting together the fragments of the print which he imagined might prove valuable in the history of engraving. Having accomplished his task, he discovered the date of the year 1418, plainly visible on the print. M. de Noter immediately conveyed intelligence of the prize which accident had placed in his hands, to the Baron de Reiffenberg, conservator of the Royal Library in Brussels. This latter gentleman, who wrote the notice at the head of this article, purchased the print for the small sum of £20, and deposited it in the establishment over which he presides.

The print, exactly 40 centimetres high, by 26 centimetres wide, has a yellowish tint; it is torn in some places and wormeaten in others. It consists of a simple outline, deeply impressed on the paper, and coloured over according to the custom of the time, but only the red paint with a little green and bistre remain. The upper part of the print is occupied by three busts of angels, holding each in either hand a crown of flowers. Two doves are flying beneath them. In the centre of a palisadoed circle, the Virgin, with the infant Jesus on her knee, is seated between two trees. On the right of the Virgin is St. Catherine,

with a sword and a wheel; near her shoulder a bird is perched. On the left of the Virgin is St. Barbara holding a tower. In front, to the right hand, St. Dorothy holds a nosegay and a basket of fruit; on the left is St. Margaret, with a cross and a book.

All the figures are seated, and their heads encircled with the nimbus, as are all the figures of saints represented even by modern painters. The hair of the Virgin is thrown back; that of the four saints streams over their shoulders. Four scrolls present their names in Gothic characters. The paper-mark is an anchor placed horizontally in the upper division of the leaf. In the middle, near the bottom, we find the date MCCCCXVIII. In point of execution, this print is very tolerable, the composition is good, and the attitudes are easy and graceful. Without entering into the question whether the date of this print be genuine or not, we cannot but notice a most striking resemblance between the gate and palisaded circle in the Brussels print, and the same objects in the first plate of a very beautiful copy of the Historia seu Providentia Virginis Mariæ, now in the library of the British Museum. We do not pretend to assign a date to the Historia Virginis Mariæ, but we feel little doubt that this and the Brussels print were executed nearly at the same time, and probably by the same artist.

The St. Christopher, which before the discovery we have just mentioned, had long been considered as the earliest print bearing a date, was found by Heinecken in the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim, near Memmingen, one of the oldest convents in Ġermany. It is dated 1423, and was pasted inside the cover of an old Latin manuscript of the 15th century. It represents St. Christopher, bearing the infant Jesus across the sea; opposite the saint is a hermit holding up a lantern to light the way, and behind, a peasant with his back turned, carrying a sack and climbing the side of a mountain. This piece, of a folio size, is engraved from wood and coloured. The style of drawing is un doubtedly German.

Pasted in the same old manuscript is another wood-print representing the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and this print, says Ottley, is evidently by the same hand as that which produced the St. Christopher. Many engravings of a like nature are to be found in the ancient German convents, the monks having preserved them in the few books that constituted their libraries at that period, by pasting them inside the covers. Two remarkable specimens of this kind are now in the British Museum : one, 15 inches high by 11 inches wide, representing the seven ages of man, with the wheel of fortune in the centre. The other, occupying half the opposite cover, containing the Virgin Mary

and infant Jesus, between St. Joachim and St. Anne. Another old print of a quarto size, represents the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. It is dated 1437, and was discovered in the Abbey of St. Blasius, in the Black Forest.

It has generally been supposed that the Low Countries do not furnish any great number of early wood-cuts: but a suspicion is beginning to arise that due honour, in this respect, has not been paid to the Dutch and Flemish artists.

One of the most ancient specimens of Dutch engravings bears the inscription, "Gheprint t' Antwerpen by my Phillery de figursnider." The subject represents two soldiers standing, and a woman seated with a dog on her knees. This print belongs to the 15th century. At the commencement of the 16th century flourished the celebrated wood-engravers, Jan Walther van Assen of Amsterdam, and Peter Coech van Aelst in Flanders. They were nearly contemporary with the famous Lucas van Leyden.

M. Duchesne mentions a St. Bernard as having been probably engraved in France by Bernard Milnet in 1454. The extraordinary style of this wood-cut classes it as the production of the same hand which executed a St. George and a St. Catherine, without dates, and also a Virgin holding the Infant Jesus, likewise without date, but bearing the name of Bernard Milnet. The discovery of this latter piece is due to Mr. Hill of Manchester, and we know not where it is now to be found, but the three other engravings of that ancient master are preserved at the Royal Library in Paris, where they only arrived during the last few years. We e may conclude the St. Bernard to be a French production, as well from the French termination of the artist's surname as from his Christian name of Bernard, which belongs to a native saint of France, among the most honoured in that country. The print of the St. Bernard was discovered about the year 1800, in the environs of Mayence, by M. Maugerard, then commissary for the French Government in the departments beyond the Rhine. The St. Catherine was brought from Germany in 1816 by Mr. Dibdin. M. Duchesne, to whom we are indebted for the classification of the works of Bernard Milnet, found the St. George in England, it then belonged to an amateur who had received it from France some years previously, and who ceded it in 1824 to the Royal Library in Paris.

In the commencement of the 15th century, the Dutch and Germans began to illustrate their prints with texts engraved underneath by means of wooden blocks; and this system, applied to the production of words and sentences, led the way to printing with moveable characters, and so on to the invention of cast metal types. But even after the great discovery of typography,

xylographic books continued for some time to appear, on account of the smaller expense necessary to their composition. Indeed, xylography flourished during nearly the whole of the 15th century. Xylographic books have all essentially a popular character, and were produced for popular instruction and popular use. The authors, far from discussing learned subjects, evidently wrote either for the ignorant crowd, or for poor priests, who wished to procure Scripture extracts at a low price, and their productions, consequently, consisted for the most part of passages from the Scriptures, or some celebrated moral discourse made intelligible by the agency of pictures. No gilded miniatures ornament these books, the ink is of a common yellowish tint, and the images are mostly, not always, coarsely painted over. This painting is far from adding to the beauty of the print, and hence those are most prized which are free from it. In France, writers who published xylographic works were called Expositors. We learn this from a small volume published by Raoul de Montfignet in 1485, and called Lexposicion de loraison dominicale.

Unfortunately, the authors of the wood-cuts termed blockbooks, have not transmitted to us their names, or the period at which they lived; we are therefore obliged to conjecture the latter through endeavours to ascertain the school to which they belong. Those ancient block-books that display the greatest ability, and which appear undoubtedly to belong to the early schools of Holland and Flanders, are: the Biblia Pauperum, the Historia seu Providentia Virginis Maria ex Cantico Canticorum, the Speculum Humane Salvationis, and the Temptationes demonis. The Biblia Pauperum is a small folio book, of forty leaves, containing as many wood-cuts that represent the principal stories of the Old and New Testament; they are printed by means of friction from engraved blocks, on one side of the paper only. According to Heinecken, four editions of the Biblia Pauperum, in forty leaves as we have said, and with a Latin text, are correct copies of each other, while another edition, with ten more prints, differs also in the composition of the subjects, which appear to have been designed by a very inferior artist. They are, however, says Ottley, most carefully engraved. Heinecken mentions one only copy of this edition preserved in the Convent of Wolfenbüttel.

There exist two other editions of the Biblia Pauperum, with the text printed in moveable characters, one in the German and the other in the Latin language. They are reckoned among the very early specimens of books printed on both sides of the page with metal types, and ornamented with wood-cuts; having been issued from the press of Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg, about the year 1462.

The original design of this Biblia appears to date from a very remote period. Heinecken describes a manuscript of it as belonging to the 14th century. In the Royal Library at Hanover is an edition with these words: S. Ansgarius est autor hujus libri. G. E. Lessing, however, has raised a most curious and interesting question as to the origin of this work. He says in his "Zur Geschichte und Litteratur, Beytr. II." p. 319, that while perusing Martin Cursius's account of the Counts of Calv in Wegelius's Thesaurus Rerum Suevicarum, he met with the following passage,

"Cæterum sicut ipsum Hirsaugiæ templum intra sese leucophæis imaginibus Veteris et Novi Testamenti Romanorumque Imperatorum pictum est, ita etiam Monasterii Perestylium iconibus artificio in xl. fenestro encausto exornatum est: iisque ternis (sicut et pulcherrimo salientium aquarum fonte) ternis inquam imaginibus eleganter decoratum est: nempe ita ut in medio cujusque fenestræ cernatur historia aliqua Novi Testamenti atque mediæ fenestræ ex Veteri Testamento typus appareat aut historia typica cum prædictionibus prophetarum de Christo."

Struck with the extraordinary resemblance this description bore to the Biblia Pauperum, he immediately instituted a search for further particulars, and at length succeeded in discovering a MS. account of the Abbey of Hirschau, written by Johann Parsimonius in 1574, containing, among other things, a minute description of the forty windows of the Abbey cloisters, with drawings of the first and last, from which it appeared, that the subjects represented on the windows, and in the Biblia Pauperum, and the order in which they occur, were exactly the same. His next task was that of tracing the age of the windows, but in this he was not so successful, being unable to carry it further back than the year 1491. He argues, however, strongly in favour of the presumption, that the book was copied from the painted glass, and adduces, among other arguments, the form in which the engraved subject is represented-being precisely that of a large window separated into three compartments: unfortunately the Abbey was destroyed by the French in 1692.

Notwithstanding all this however, we cannot arrive at any definite conclusion as to the time at which the Biblia Pauperum first appeared; the four editions, copies of each other, are much more ancient than the one containing ten additional prints, which Ottley supposes to belong to the Low Countries or to Holland, and which, according to him, date at least as early as 1420. Supposing the date assigned to the Brussels print to be correct, this latter conjecture by Ottley may not be far from the truthbut we must enter our protest against the limited number of editions specified by bibliographers, our own inquiries having led