PRINTING. CHAPTER I. THE ANTECEDENTS OF PRINTING. The meteor beam that science lent mankind, ALMOST from the earliest period-at least from the time when men began to congregate in society, and formed associations for mutual defence and protection-the desire sprung up of prolonging beyond the limited period of human life the knowledge of individual existence, or of conveying to those who must succeed some memorial of the transactions in which either individually or collectively, they had been concerned. In these lingering, longing desires after immortality, originated the engravings on the rocks of Assyria and Nineveh, the B writings on the bricks of Babylon, the hieroglyphics on the pillars, friezes, and door-posts of the temples of Egypt, as well as on the sarcophagi which contain the mummied remains of that ancient people. The slightest examination of the records of the earliest ages will prove the reality of this process; and here the skill, knowledge, and perseverance of the moderns have been shown in a most extraordinary degree, eliciting at once the admiration of the most learned, and the astonishment of the most ignorant, who have for ages been wandering over lands imbedded with monuments, almost coeval with the first combinations of mankind in society. "We have lived," said one of the chiefs of one of these wandering tribes, "We and our fathers have lived, for some hundreds of years upon these lands, and had no understanding that there was other than the turf over which our flocks and our herds, had been roaming, and with which we were familiar from infancy; and here comes a stranger from over some thousands of miles, who never saw our country-yet here he comes, and with a rod, and a line, and a pickaxe, uncovers to our view buildings and wonders which surpass our imagination and astonish our senses." Can we wonder at the surprise and astonishment of this chief, when we consider that the district where these |