INTRODUCTION.

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o him who thinks of it truly, the wonder of a book can never cease. That lines of
ers and words, formed by types on sheets of paper, can transfer from one man to
10ther, indeed, to thousands, perhaps to generations of men, truth, sentiment, im-
zination, the wealth of mind and life, enriching the reader without impoverishing the
ithor, lifting the one to a height and breadth of vision which the other has gained
after years of self-denying and painful toil, to make the secrets of the world and of
e soul common property,—this approaches the marvelous, not to say the miraculous.
hrough the portals of the eye and ear a stranger may enter the brain and so the mind
id heart, take possession of thought and love, enthrone himself as a supreme master
life, moulding and directing the will, shaping character and conduct, awakening in
powers hitherto undreamed of, bestowing upon us treasures that shall endure to eter-
ty, and crowning us with the radiant and life-giving sense that we are the heirs of
mortality, and all this done though the writer himself may have been in the dust a
ousand years. Cold type may become a sceptre of power such as Alexander, Casar
Napoleon never wielded, its authority entering the inmost recesses of the soul, ruling
ith a sway that is not questioned, and maintaining its sovereignty over millions from
eto age. Nearly five hundred years ago the most powerful man on earth, at whose
ad the world seemed to tremble, was Tamerlane. His empire stretched from the
editerranean to the Ganges. He stood one day, clad in complete steel, battle-axe on
oulder, near the site of Damascus, which he had destroyed, and reviewed his troops
er they had erected a pyramid composed of seventy thousand skulls. Well did he
erit his title ““The Scourge of God.’? Not far from that time a poor German lad was
aying in the streets of Mentz, and his cheek must have turned pale as the report of the
rtar’s bloody triumphs floated through Europe. Who could have imagined that the
y, John Gutenberg, ‘‘when he was come to years,’’ by his invention of metal types
d their use, would wield a weapon more mighty than the sword of the Mogul, and
und an empire of printed books whose reign shall last as long as sun and moon en-
re, while thirty years ago the last descendant of the ‘“‘Great Mogul” perished inglo-
usly at Delhi, and his name and fame would have been lost from among men but for
XUI