His adversary was a simple "gentleman"-his black coat and neat necktie betokened a young Londoner or Parisian, more accustomed to the every-day life of a great city, than to the imposing sight of a ship in the trough of the ocean. This young man had a countenance in which care was depicted, but it was simply ennui that gave him that expression; he sat on the deck watching with what might be his last look, the foggy sky breaking up before the rising sun into fleecy clouds -floods of greenish white, through which the sun was just breaking forth, and the busy yet silent movements of an army of marines, shut up within the flanks of a ship, and who had only one instinct, that of obeying the orders of a single man. Thus it was on each side that the mo

ment of strife was awaited.

When the captain had given his last order, he stepped on to the quarter-deck towards his adversary, who got up on seeing him approach, and though he was of less stature than his enemy, is was easy to see that he was not wanting in courage.

At that very moment a dead calm had suspended the ship's course; the first rays of the rising sun had chained the winds down; the sails hung upon the masts; and the whole ship's crew were thus left at liberty to watch the progress of the hostile proceedings. The veteran sailorsreal children of the salt-had taken up their stations in front, the younger men were behind, the staff surrounded the person of the captain, like a group of witnesses upon so solemn an occasion, and if you had lifted your head you would have seen the young middies perched in the rigging, from whence they contemplated the imposing spectacle that was presented below.

The young man alone stood by himself. He had neither friend nor witness; he had not even a sigh in his favour, not even the benefit of a moment's doubt as to what was going to happen to his person, so perfectly was every one of that ship's crew persuaded that it was an act of madness to engage the captain on his quarter-deck-a madness for which only one result could atone!

The young man himself, too, seemed to feel that when the swords were drawn he did not stand upon firm land: the roll of the ship made him swerve, and he would have been a dead man had not the captain, seeing him at so great a disadvantage, cast his sword into the sea, and called for pistols. Lots had no sooner been drawn as to who should fire first, than a short, sharp sound was heard, so slight that it was lost in a moment in the murmur of the waves. Yet had that slight report been enough to kill the captain; he had fallen down and died as if it was an every-day occurrence, scolding one of those who stood mournfully over him, because he had a hole in his coat-sleeve.

As to his murderer, what became of his murderer? When you are under the smiling shadows of the Bois de Boulogne, in the midst of the shrubs of the Barrière d'Enfer, once your enemy is on the ground, and your honour is revenged, you are dragged away from the scene of slaughter, and you leave to the victim's seconds the task of lifting up his corpse; but on board ship, when all is sky and sea around, you must remain to confront your victim, and when your feelings of revenge are gratified, and they are succeeded by remorse for the deed done, you must

be present at the funeral, you must hold a corner of the flag that does duty as a shroud, and you must even lend an unwilling hand in casting the body of your victim into the sea.

What must have been the agony of that young man when he saw the flood open to receive the still warm body that was thus thrown to it, when he heard the booming of the great guns, and the mournful shouts of the crew bidding it an eternal farewell, when he saw the vessel resume its course across the wide expanse, and he found himself alone amidst the stern silence and the general mourning!

Thus spoke Captain Gaudeffroi; his narrative seemed to make a deep impression upon all the witnesses of our miserable duel on firm land, and I alone felt that the captain was prolix. I thought of nothing but of Bernard and of Julietta.

At last evening came on, and each took his way home. I set off on the traces of Julietta and Bernard; but it was in vain that I ransacked Paris. I went to the Bouffes, to Julie's, to Cyprien's-everywhere. Neither he nor she had been heard of. At last I went home myself, and slept till morning.

Next morning, who should come in but Bernard himself.

"Where were you?" said I. "I was seeking you everywhere last night."

"Why," he said, "I was at the Théâtre-Français, seeing 'Mithridates' played, with Julietta."

"And what did she say, Bernard, about the hole in your hat ?"

"She declared you were a nice fellow to take aim with such desperate intentions upon your friend, and she vowed she would never speak to you again, for she detests a 'buveur de sang' like you."

And so it really happened; ever since that horrible affair she would not speak to me, she forgot altogether that it was I who had introduced Bernard to her; she kept the hat with the hole in it as a trophy, and for more than a month suspended it in her boudoir. And thus it was, that by this unfortunate duel I won a new hat, lost the good graces of the lady I loved, and was superseded by Bernard.

It is true, however, that I had Captain Gaudeffroi's story into the bargain.

ALBERT DÜRER.

WITH SOMETHING OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.

Ar the time when Dürer lived (at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century), the newly-discovered arts of printing and engraving occupied men's minds in a remarkable degree. As he was one who made great advances in engraving, it may not be out of place to attempt to give some idea of the state of those arts before his age, and of the difficulties which attended, or rather prevented, the diffusion of written information in more distant times.

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Among the calamities which followed the raid of the Goths and Vandals into Italy in the fifth century A.D., there was one which, two centuries afterwards, exercised a dark and dreary influence over the civilisation of the Western World. The Saracens about the 635 invaded Egypt. After besieging Jerusalem, they took the magnificent city of Alexandria. We don't here refer to their having destroyed the celebrated library there, nor pause to express surprise that part of it should have previously perished by the orders of so enlightened a person as Julius Cæsar. These facts may be mentioned by the way, and credit may also be given to Cleopatra that she, with the aid of Marc Antony, was the foundress of a second library there. The latter, with what remained of the former collection of books, were used by the Saracens as fuel for their baths!

But what is now more especially referred to, as the result of the Saracenic invasion of Egypt, was the cutting off of the communication which had previously existed between that country and the people then settled in Italy and other parts of Europe. In consequence of this, a substance which was made from a reed which grew on the banks of many rivers in the East could not be obtained in Europe, or was scantily supplied there.

This reed was the papyrus, and the substance that was manufactured from it was used in common with wood, ivory, waxen tablets, and the skins of animals, for inscribing on its surface the books and writings of the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians.

It was the paper of that age.

There was a manufactory of it at Memphis three hundred years before the time of Alexander the Great, and, after the Romans had conquered Egypt, it was made at Alexandria for a like period before the time of our Saviour.

Such was the importance of the manufacture, that on a dispute arising between one of the Egyptian Ptolemies and Eumenes II., King of Pergamus, a city of Asia Minor, and when Eumenes wished to augment a library there in imitation of the Alexandrian Library, Ptolemy prohibited the export of the papyrus. This caused Eumenes to see what he could do with the skins of animals as a substitute for the Memphian paper, and he was therefore considered as the inventor of "Charta pergamenea,' or parchment, as the word "pergamenea" was corrupted into. This was

159 A.D.

* Mentioned in the 2nd chapter of Revelations, and the birthplace of Galen the physician.

The papyrus rush is supposed to have been alluded to by Isaiah in chap. xix. ver. 6 and 7, who says: "They shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither, the paper reeds by the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks shall wither, be driven way, and be no more seen.'

Without assuming this as being prophetical, we may say that the supply of papyrus, or paper, was cut off from the Western World. And for how long a period?

For no less than four centuries.

During this time it may be truly said, that "Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people."

The few who might be able to withdraw themselves from the struggle for existence, and from the fashionable pursuit of the time-war -so as to write books or treatises, as the spirit might move them, would find that there were greater difficulties in their way than the paper duty of more modern days, which some people were lately anxious to retain.

He who might be aminded to put down his own thoughts or those of others in a lasting form would first have to catch his hare (or perhaps his sheep), in a supply of parchment (which was neither abundant nor cheap), and then perhaps to get it dressed, to receive the pen or reed of the person who could put letters upon it; in other words, who could

write.

By reason of this and other obstacles few books were penned, and those that had been penned or reeded became of great value. The scarcity of materials for writing was such that Robertson,* the historian, tells us: "There still remain MSS. of the eighth, ninth, and following centuries written on parchment, from which some former writing had been erased in order to substitute a new composition in its place. In this manner it is probable that several works of the ancients perished. A book of Livy or Tacitust might be erased to make room for the legendary tale of a saint or the superstitious prayers of a missal."

About 796, Charlemagne granted an unlimited right of hunting to the abbot and monks of Jethin, that they might make of the skins of the slain deer girdles and covers for their books.‡

A light at length broke upon the world. This was the art of making paper in the manner since become universal. Gibbon tells us, in the ninth volume of the "Decline and Fall," that "the inestimable art of transforming linen into paper was diffused over the Western World from the manufactures of Samarcand in the twelfth century."§

* Charles V., vol. i. p. 227, in notes.

†The preservation of Tacitus is said to be owing to the accidental preservation of a single copy. Those that had been placed in the Roman libraries, according to government rule, had been lost when those libraries were destroyed.

In St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, he says: "The cloak I left at Troas bring with thee, and the books, and especially the parchments."

Coming from a leaf, we get the word folio, from folium, a leaf; volume, from volumen-the writing which was rolled up; liber, a book, from liber, the inner bark of a tree which was used for writing on; and the Bible-par excellence The Book-is said to have been named from Byblos, a city of Syria, but which word originally signified the bark of a tree.

§ It was called by Montfauçon, the archæologist, "Charta bombycine," or cotton paper, and Samarcand was the great city of "Timour the Tartar," from whence we should hardly expect much that was civilising; but Gibbon shows, in a note, that paper was first imported there from China.

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When paper did come into use, there was still a lack of intelligence as to the means of using it. The art of book-making remained with the clergy, or clerks," as they were then and are still styled in formal writings, and who are supposed by Dr. Dibdin, the bibliographer, to be the relics of the Jewish scribes. They were the Chapman and Halls and Longmans of that day.

In every large abbey there was a scriptorium, where the "clerici" were employed in transcribing books and illuminating initial letters, and for the support of which estates were specially left.

In 1330, books were so scarce that they were not sold but by special contract, like land, and were the subject of transfer by deed.

In 1360, the royal library at Paris did not exceed twenty volumes. Further light was not thrown on the subject until two centuries after the introduction of paper, so slowly did knowledge progress in those days. This was in the year 1381, when playing-cards were inventedor, perhaps, imitated from something of the sort imported from the East -for the diversion of Charles VI. of France, whose brain had been disordered by a coup de soleil. This was in the reign of our Henry V., and about the time when Wycliffe had been otherwise employed in translating the whole Bible into English.

Wooden blocks of a rude form were used for making cards, and, in 1390, the first paper-mill in Germany was erected near the city of Nuremberg-more of which hereafter.

In the last-mentioned year there is the following entry in the accounts of the treasurer of Charles VI.: "Paid fifty-six shillings of Paris to Jacquemenin Griengonneur, the painter, for three packs of cards, gilded with gold and painted with divers colours and several devices, to be carried to the king for his amusement."

Cards soon after became the amusement of the noble and wealthy, and, not long after, of the artisans and lower classes; thence they became articles of manufacture in Germany, and at Augsburg a street is mentioned where the "karten mäacher" lived, and where the business is still followed. From hence they were exported in small casks, packed like herrings.

To counteract the effect produced by cards, the monks stamped rude figures of saints with wooden blocks, and distributed them among the people. From hence larger sacred subjects came to be transferred to paper by means of wooden blocks, and one of St. Christopher,* carrying the infant Saviour across the sea, according to a curious legend, was in the possession of the late Earl Spencer, bearing the date of 1423.

In 1433, writing-quills were so scarce at Venice that men of letters could scarcely procure them. Ambrosius Traversarius, a monk of Camelalde, sent from Venice to his brother a bunch of quills, with a letter, in which he said: They are not the best, but such as I received as a present; show the whole bunch to our friend Nicholas, that he may select a quill, for these articles are, indeed, scarcer in this city than at

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* From Christum fero. A giant of Canaan, who wished to serve the mightiest of sovereigns. He found there was one greater than Satan. To try his faith, he was told to fetch a staff, and save all who struggled in crossing a river. At length a child called for help; in carrying it over the child got so heavy that his strength nearly failed him; but with a courageous heart, and his trusty staff, he got over. The child was Our Lord, and the giant became St. Christopher.