fessed what troubled him. Jezebel thereupon bade him arise and rejoice, promising to give him the vineyard. "So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles in his city, dwelling with Naboth."* The elders and nobles, at Jezebel's instigation, falsely accused Naboth of blaspheming God and the king; and he was stoned to death. For this act of oppression and bloodshed, God sent Elijah to meet Ahab, when he went, having killed Naboth, to take possession, and the prophet foretold the coming punishment of the guilty king and queen: In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine;" and again "the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel." The prophecy, we need scarcely add, was strictly fulfilled, and where Ahab sought only his pleasure, he found death, and Jezebel a dishonorable grave.

66

دو

The Romans used seals at a very early period of their history. It is clear, moreover, from some Roman seals which are still in existence, that the crude principle of letterpress printing was known to them. They certainly practised that rude and cruel form of printing which is not yet banished from our fields, the branding of cattle with redhot irons, which after all is printing in hair, wool, and hide. It is not known what subtances the Romans used as sealing-wax; and

* 1 Kings xxi. 8.

the knowledge of it having been lost by succeeding nations, they substituted lead. The earliest seals in Christian times were thin impressions upon lead. The Emperor Charlemagne wore his seal on the pommel of his sword, and he used to say, "I will maintain with the point that which I have engaged (ie., set his seal to) with the hilt.”

The invention of money was another step in the art of printing. To stamp the figure of a head or any other device, on a piece of money, is nothing else than to print on a piece of metal. Remarkably enough, too, the method used in stamping money is the same now as it has ever been. An engraving of the device to be stamped, or die, as it is called, is cut on a punch, or handle, and the punch is forcibly driven against the metal, which is thereby stamped with the device. It is ,uncertain when money was first coined. No mention of money is made in the early part of Holy Scripture, and the earliest profane writer, Homer, says nothing whatever on the subject.

*

* We read of skekels as early as the time of Abraham. For instance, Abraham gave 400 skekels of silver "current money with the merchants," as the Scripture says, for a burial-place for Sarah his wife, and she died about 1860 years before the birth of Christ. But though the word "money," is used in the translations of the Bible, it is not found in the original Hebrew; for what is now commonly called money did not exist amongst the Jews. Skekels were weights not coins, and consisted of ingots and wedges of metal. The word "coin," it is supposed, is derived from the Latin word for wedge. At a later period the Jews stamped their skekels with Aaron's rod

Though commerce sprung up at a very early age, it was for a long time carried on by barter. Herodotus, surnamed "the Father of History," says that the Lydians were the first people who coined gold and silver money. The origin of it is also attributed to Pheidon, king of Argos, 895 years before the birth of Christ. The Hindoos used to possess a coin which they declared to be 4000 years old, and they reverenced it like a god. It was originally dug up near the royal palace of Mysore. It was afterwards found amongst the treasures of Tippoo Saib, captured by the British army at Seringapatam, and is now in the possession of the East India Company. Its age is, in all probability, fabulous.

As seals were formed with a graver, and money with a die, it is obvious, that engraving preceded the primitive method of printing. Some particulars of the early history of this art may therefore not be out of place. The ancient Egyptians, who were, perhaps, the people first formed into a nation, were great and very expert engravers. The stone coffins, or sarcophagi, in which they buried their dead, the walls and pillars of the vast temples in which they worshipped their strange gods, their statues and obelisks, the Egyptians covered with figures and inscriptions, and even

and the golden pot that held the manna; just as in our time pure gold and silver articles are stamped with the mark of the Goldsmiths' Company, as a proof of their purity.

present-day

pictures of battles, processions and other events, engraved with a superiority of style, which is the wonder of our more enlightened age. The engravers of the present day are, in fact, inferior in one respect to those who lived three thousand years ago. We possess no tools hard enough or sharp enough to cut the granite and porphyry and jasper, which the Egyptians covered with the most exquisite engravings. We can only guess at the means by which these works were accomplished.

We are told in the Book of Exodus, that the children of Israel, during their bondage in Egypt, learnt the art of engraving on seals and on metal plates, from their oppressors. When they were delivered from captivity, Moses was commanded by the Lord, "to make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it like the engravings of a signet." Bezaleel is also mentioned as being "filled with the wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work with the graver, as well as to devise cunning works, to work in gold, in silver, and in brass." The earliest Greeks used engraving in delineating maps on metal plates. Aristagoras, we are told by Herodotus, appeared before the king of Sparta, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, with a tablet of brass, on which were inscribed every part of the habitable world, the seas, and the rivers. Probably as early as this, at all events before the time of Christianity, lands were granted in the penin

sula of Hindostan by deeds engraved on copper, just as we now engross them on parchment. One of these copper plates, or deeds, bearing date twenty years before the birth of Christ, is still in existence. Engraving, however, is not printing, though one might have naturally suggested the other. Yet

strangely enough, letter-press printing, that is, the art now commonly used, was discovered before any one had obtained impressions from engraved plates. The art of printing pictures and writing, by the means of engraved copper plates, dates from and after the time of letter-press printing.

The first appearance of printing in a practical shape, was when the seal, or other stamp, instead of being forced against a softer substance than itself, was wetted with some liquid of the nature of ink, and pressed upon another body, so that an image or picture of the stamp was transferred to that other body. This was first accomplished in China, by a minister of state named Foong-taon, in the tenth century. Foong-taon was a learned man, as all the great officers of state in China must be, learning being the only road to royal favour in that country. He desired to multiply the copies of a book which had pleased him, and at the same time save the labour of writing them. This task had until then been deemed impossible; but probably the thought struck Foong-taon that with some contrivance he