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year 1471, when Louis XI. borrowed the works of Rasis, the Arabian physician, from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, he not only deposited in pledge a quantity of plate, but was obliged to give the surety of a nobleman for their restoration. When any person made a present of a book to a church or monastery, the only libraries during several ages, it was deemed a donative of such value that he offered it at the altar, pro remedio animæ suæ, in order to obtain forgiveness of sins.

NEWSPAPERS.

Before Newspapers were introduced, such as were desirous of procuring information on political subjects, engaged writers of News Letters, who forwarded the occurrences of the day to their employers.

Periodical Newspapers first came into general use in England during the wars of the usurper Cromwell; they were used to disseminate among the people sentiments of loyalty or rebellion, according as their authors were disposed. We seem to have been obliged to the Italians for the idea; and perhaps it was their gazettas, from gazerra, a magpie, or chatterer, which have given a name to these papers. Honest Peter Heylin, in the preface to his Cosmography, mentions, that "the affairs of each town, or war, were better presented to the reader in the Weekly News Books." It was long supposed that the origin of periodical Literature in this country, was to be traced to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when England being threatened with a formidable invasion from Spain, the wise and prudent Burleigh projected "The English Mercurie," printed in the year 1588, with the design of conveying correct information to the people during the continuance of the boasted Spanish Armada in the Channel. It has however been shown by Mr. Watts, of the British Museum, that the copy of the " English Mercurie," dated July 28th, 1588, in that Library, owes its existence to the ingenuity of the noble author of The Athenian Letters. The first weekly paper was published by Nathaniel Butler, in August, 1622, entitled, certain news of this present week," and within a few years other journals were started, but they did not become numerous until the time of the civil wars.

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In a Leicester journal for 1750, about which time the paper was established, so great was the dearth of News matter at that period, that the editor was compelled to have recourse to the Bible to "help him out ;" and actually extracted the First Chapter of Genesis, and so continued the extracts in the succeeding numbers as far as the Tenth Chapter of Exodus!

The journal above alluded to was then printed in London, and sent down to Leicester for publication!

Newspapers were first stamped in 1713.

THE POPE'S BULL.

This name, which is now applied exclusively to instruments issuing out of the Roman Chancery, is derived from the seals which were appended to them being formerly of gold Bullion. Bulls were not originally confined to the popes alone, but were also issued by emperors, princes, bishops, and great men, who, till the thirteenth century, sometimes affixed seals of metal, as well as of wax, to edicts, charters, and other instruments, though they were equally called Bulls, whether they were sealed with one or the other. The popes continue to the present day to affix metal or lead seals to their bulls, and only when they wish to bestow any peculiar marks of grace and favour on sovereigns or princes, are seals of Bullion or gold affixed. The bull of pope Clement VII., conferring the title of Defender of the Faith on Henry the Eighth, had a seal of gold affixed to it. Bulls containing matter of grace and favour, were suspended by strings of red and yellow silk; but denunciatory and punitive bulls were hung by hempen cords.

BIBLES.

In the reign of Edward the First, the price of a fairly written Bible was twenty-seven pounds. The hire of a labourer was but three-halfpence a day. The purchase of a copy would, of course, have taken such a person the earning of fifteen years and three months of constant labour. It will be seen from a preceding article, that the first printed book was a vulgate edition of the Bible, in 1462. The British and Foreign Bible Society contributed to the Great Exhibition specimens of 165 books, in different languages, from the 170 versions of the Holy Scriptures, either in whole or in part, which have been published directly or indirectly by the Society, and of which 118 are from translations never before printed; and of which more than twenty-four millions of copies have been circulated since its institution in 1804.

THE BIBLE AND ITS HISTORY.

The Bible history commenced 430 years B.C. The Septuagint version was made in 284; first divided into chapters, 1253. The first English edition was in 1536; the first authorized edition in England was in 1539; the second translation was ordered to be read in churches, 1549; the present translation finished, September, 1611; permitted by the pope to be translated into all the languages of the Catholic states, February 28th, 1759; the following is a dissection of the Old and New Testament:

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The Apocrypha has 183 chapters, 6,081 verses, and 125,185 words. The middle chapter, and the least in the Bible, is the 117th Psalm; the middle verse is the 8th of 118th Psalm; the middle line is the 2nd Book of the Chronicles, 4th chapter, and 16th verse; the word and occurs in the Old Testament 35,535 times; the same word in the New Testament occurs 10,684 times; the word Jehovah occurs 6,855 times.

Old Testament. The middle Book is Proverbs; the middle chapter, the 29th of Job; the middle verse is the 2nd Book of Chronicles, 20th chapter, and 18th verse; the least verse is the 1st Book of Chronicles, 1st chapter, and 1st verse.

New Testament. The middle is the Thessalonians 2nd; the mid- ́ dle chapter is between the 13th and 14th of the Romans; the middle verse is the 17th of the 17th chapter of the Acts; the least verse is the 35th of the 11th chapter of the Gospel by Saint John.

The 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra has all the letters of the alphabet in it.

The 19th chapter of the 2nd Book of Kings, and the 37th chapter of Isaiah, are alike.

The Book of Esther has 10 chapters, but neither the words Lord nor God in it.

The 26th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is generally considered as the finest piece of reading extant.-Chronology, or Historian's Companion.

ORIGIN OF THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH.

Wickliffe, who exercised the right of private judgment in England a century and a half before Luther taught it as a principle in Germany, may be said to have been the first dissenter from the church of Rome.

After a life wonderfully preserved from the unsparing cruelty of ecclesiastical power, by the protection of Edward III., his memory was affectionately revered, and, as printing had not been discovered, his writings were scarce, and earnestly sought. He may be said to have been the first who translated the New Testament into English; and a splendid edition of the translation made by Wickliffe and his followers, has just been published by the University of Oxford, in four quarto volumes, under the editorship of Sir Frederick Madden and the Rev. J. Forshall.

DOMESDAY BOOK.

How many read of Domesday Book without knowing what it is, or inquiring into what it means; let us then inform them that it is a valuable record of antiquity, in which the estates of this kingdom are registered, begun in 1080, by order of William the Conqueror, and compiled in less than six years, written on 380 double pages of vellum, in one hand; and it is, without doubt, the most important and interesting document possessed by any nation in Europe; it is also remarkable, that on searching this book, we find such a similarity in the orthography of names of towns upwards of seven centuries ago, and the present period; for instance, the following towns in Sussex.

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It was called Domesday Book, because it was intended to carry down to the latest posterity, circumstances and events of former times. That it has thus far given an earnest of its deserving the title, all historians agree. Such, reader, is the celebrated Domesday Book, one of those records so peculiar to the land of the venerable Bede and the immortal Newton.

Domesday Book has been printed by the government, in four folio volumes; and a most valuable introduction to it by Sir Henry Ellis, has been separately printed in 2 vols. octavo.

PAPER.

This useful article was invented in China, when the art of making sheets of paper from the bark of trees, from bamboo, old rags, silk, hemp, or cotton, reduced to pulp, dates from the commencement of the second century of the Christian era. Before the invention of paper, the papyrus was in general use among European nations; the use of this, however, ceased about the ninth century, and was supplanted by the cotton paper, made in the east. The introduction of paper-making in France, dates from the fourteenth century; in England, its manufacture was much later. From some verses printed in a book by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1496, entitled Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus rerum, it appears that the paper had been made for it by John Tate, jun., at his mill in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In 1558, Queen Elizabeth granted to her jeweller, John Speilman, the right to erect a paper-mill at Dartford. So late as the middle of the last century, only common wrapping-paper was manufactured in Great Britain. It was not until 1770, that the celebrated J. Whatman, established fine paper-making at Maidstone, in Kent, after his return from the continent, where he had worked as a

journeyman. In 1803, Mr. Bryan Donkin produced a self-acting machine for continuous paper, which he erected at Frogmore, in Hertfordshire; and in 1804, he put up the second machine at Two Waters. In 1809, Mr. Dickinson invented another method of making endless paper; since which time various patents have been taken out for improvements in parts of the machinery, or for other machinery to be applied in various stages of the process. Wire marks, or water marks, as they are called, were formerly applied to paper to distinguish it. On the paper used by Caxton and the other early printers, these marks consisted of an ox head and star, a collared dog's head, a crown, a shield, a jug, &c. A head with a fool's-cap and bell, gave name to the paper called foolscap; and post paper seems to have derived its name from the mark of a horn, which was formerly carried by the postman, and blown to announce his arrival. The annual value of paper manufactured in this country is said to be two millions sterling.

PRINTING.

The press is the most important instrument of civilisation. It is by the aid of printing that different nations have imparted to each other their thoughts and their feelings, and have thus received a combined existence. In every age, and in all countries, printing denotes the state of civilization, of which books are the reflex, and the history of the human mind is written in bibliography. The origin of the art is involved in obscurity, there being no clue by which it can be clearly traced, yet it is doubtless of very early date: some authors maintain that printing was practised during the building of Babylon. Some have supposed that the knowledge of the art was originally obtained from the Chinese. Hence we find that Abdalla's Chinese History notices the wooden tablets engraven to print entire pages on one side of the leaf, and afterwards practised by Coster and other block-printers in the Low Countries. Four names have appeared in the controversy respecting the invention of printing:-John Gutenberg of Strasburg; John Fust (or Faust) of Mayence; Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim; and Lawrence Coster of Haarlem. It is supposed that Caxton brought the art of printing into England in 1474, and that this date is indicated in the centre of his device. Stow says, that he first exercised his business in an old chapel near the entrance of the Abbey; but a very curious placard in Mr. Douce's library at Oxford, shows that he printed in the Almonry. The two largest collections from Caxton's press, are those in the British Museum, and in Earl Spencer's library at Althorpe. Soon after the first origin of movable types, the art of printing had attained a great degree of perfection, and it was not till the second half of the last century, that owing to the efforts of Ibarra in Spain; of Baskerville and of Bulmer in England; of the

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