Florence." Ambrosius also complains, at the same time, that he had scarcely any more ink, and requests that a small vessel filled with it might be sent to him.* Soon after this the art of cutting a page of writing upon a wooden block, and obtaining an impression from it, was introduced. In this way a sort of catechism of the Bible, called "Biblia Pauperum," appeared in 1430. Lawrence Coster, of Haarlem, is maintained by many to have been the first inventor of printing. It is related of him that, while walking in the wood near the city (as citizens were wont to do in the afternoon), he began to pick out letters on the bark of the beech. With these he stamped marks upon paper in the manner of a seal, and at length formed sentences for the amusement of the children of his brother-in-law. Being a man of inventive genius, he afterwards discovered a glutinous kind of ink, and arrived at better things. To John Guttenberg, of Mentz, and afterwards of Strasburg, is generally ascribed the honour of this great discovery, A.D. 1440. Dr. Dibdin faintly hints that the knowledge of block-printing came from the Chinese, and was adopted there long ere it was known in Europe. Be this as it may, it is now generally admitted that- 1. John Guttenbergt was the father of printing; 2. Peter Schoeffert the father of type founding; and 3. John Fausts the generous patron by whose means the art was brought rapidly to perfection. After the groundwork of the art had been laid, the rise towards perfection is understood to have been more rapid than any other art or science of those times. Little more than thirty years elapsed from the time of printing the "Biblia Pauperum," in 1430, from wooden blocks, to the time when Guttenberg and Schoeffer, with Faust's aid, had perfected their cast-metal types. The art of engraving on copper is said to have been invented about 1460, by a goldsmith of Florence, named Thomas Finiguerra. The earliest copper-plate engraving is of this time, and the following circumstance is said to have led to the discovery. Finiguerra chanced to let fall a piece of copper, engraved and filled with ink, into melted sulphur, and observing that the exact impression of his work was left on the sulphur, he repeated the experiment on moistened paper, rolling it gently with a roller. Another version is, that a washerwoman left some linen upon a dish on which Finiguerra had been engraving, and that an impression of the subject came off, however imperfect, upon the linen, occasioned by its weight and moisture. The Germans contend that it was practised in their country previously; that Francis Behold invented it, and his immediate followers were Israel de Mechaniel and Martin Stock, or Schon (?) (erroneously stated to have been one of the preceptors of Albert Dürer), and John Muller, called Regiomontanus. * Beckman's History of Inventions. † Anglicè, good hill. The shepherd. SA hand. i.e., John Faust lent a hand to Peter the Shepherd and John of the Good Hill, and thus the trio attained great eminence. In 1471, William Caxton, the London mercer,* introduced the art of printing into England. In the same auspicious year the celebrated person of whom we have now to speak first saw the light. This was at the city of Nuremberg, in Germany, now part of the kingdom of Bavaria, and about ninety-six miles north-west of Munich. It was then a city of the first importance. The great stream of commerce flowed through that part of Germany. It was before Vasco de Gama had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and opened a way for the rich productions of India by that passage. Nuremberg, from soon after the time of the Crusades, had grown to be a principal depôt for Indian merchandise, which came by the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, and so from Venice and Genoa. The central position of Nuremberg on the map of Europe enabled its traders to diffuse such merchandise by the Rhine and the Danube to the north and west of Europe, and along with it to dispose of what have long been called Nuremberg wares. Watches, called "Nuremberg eggs," were very early made there by Peter Hele. The citizens had a saying: Nüruberg hand Gecht durch alle land. Nüruberg's hand Goes thro' every land. And we find that the first German railway was made there as early as 1836, to Furth, four and a half miles, and that gun-carriages, among other things, were first made there. It was a free city, and furnished the Emperors of Germany with a contingent of six thousand soldiers. At the present time it is famous for its numerous and well-conducted public institutions, for a variety of schools -among the latter, for fifteen at which children are supplied with books, clothing, and bread gratis. It is also famous for workings in iron and other metals, and for being an emporium-a great emporium-for cheap toys, which are made by the country people in the wooded tract between Franconia and Thuringia. It is a perfect ark of Noah's arks, &c. The birth of Albert Dürer took place on the 20th May, 1471. His father, as is well known, was a goldsmith, as was his grandfather. The father came from Cola, in Hungary, and after spending some time at Bruges, where he would have ample opportunities of perfecting himself in his trade, he settled at Nuremberg, and married the daughter of his master, Jerome Haller. The entry of his birth in the father's diary is in the following terms: “Item. In the year 1471 after the birth of Christ, on the day of St. Prudentius, at the sixth hour of the day, on a Friday in the Holy Week, my wife Barbara bore me my second son, to whom Anthony Kobürgher was godfather, and he was called Albert, after me." Now from this Anthony Kobürgher we learn that the city of Nuremberg received the art of typography in 1472, and that he was a person conspicuously eminent for his learning, as well as for his elegance and cor * Mercers used to import bijouterie along with silk and cloths from the Netherlands, also cards and pictures. June-VOL. CXXVIII. NO. dx. rectness in printing. He was styled "the prince of printers," and was, therefore, a fitting sponsor to one who was afterwards called "the Homer of artists," in a city which has been called "the Athens of Ger many. The good goldsmith, we are told, had no fewer than eighteen children. Most of them died in youth, and only two outlived Albert: his brother Andreas, who ultimately inherited his stores of art, and his brother Hans, who became court printer to the King of Poland. 66 His father must have been a good man, for Dürer in his journal says: My dear father took great pains with his children to teach them how to honour God in all things, for his chiefest desire was that he might bring them up under such wholesome discipline that they might be pleasant both to God and man; therefore his daily speech to us was, that we should abound in love to God, and act faithfully towards our neighbour." When a child, he chose drawing as his recreation, and drew sportively different parts of the human body, and even whole figures, with so true a hand that they were considered perfectly symmetrical. For the purpose of his trade, he had instructions in drawing from Martin Hapse. Before he was sixteen, Albert, who was a handsome, intellectual youth, had attained such proficiency in the art of a goldsmith, that we are told he executed a fine piece of chased silver, representing the "Seven Falls of our Saviour." This was from a tradition in the Roman Catholic Church, that our Saviour fell seven times while bearing his cross up Mount Calvary. The intention of his father was that he should follow his own trade of a goldsmith (no doubt to help to keep the family, which was becoming a serious charge). The son's genius took a nobler flight. His instinct was to become a painter. His father yielded to his desire, and placed him with Michael Wohlgemuth, the artist, to whom he was apprenticed, in 1486, for three years, to learn the art and mystery of a limner.t Having so far surrendered his own judgment to his son, the father seems to have done all he could to further the latter's views. When out of his time, called his "lehre jahre," the father complied with the artist custom of the age, and which prevails to this day, and sent him abroad for improvement, on his "wander jahre,” as it was, and is still, called. This was in 1490, when he was nineteen. He went from town to town, painting for his living whomsoever he could get to sit to him, and found a ready welcome among all who cultivated art. Before this time Savonarola had exposed the corruption of the Romish Church, and the light of the Reformation was spreading over Europe. -The curtain had been fairly lifted upon the great theatre of the world;— the dark ages had passed away, and a multiplied intelligence was shedding its influence abroad;-poetry had begun to flourish in Germany;-the * If it be desired to fix the date of Dürer's birth, it was fourteen days after the battle of Tewkesbury had replaced the Yorkist Edward IV. on the throne of England. † He was intended to be placed with Martin Schon, of Colmar, but the latter's death prevented this. study of the Greek language had been introduced in England;-arts and commerce were in the ascendant;-the brilliant reign of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain was graced by the discoveries of Columbus ;-and "the last sigh of the Moor" had been breathed by King Boabdil on quitting his palace of the Alhambra.-The mighty Luther had also come upon the stage! It was during this stirring time that our young artist was upon his travels, and became acquainted with some of the leading spirits of the age. Nor was he long in espousing the principles of the Reformation, along with his friend Wilibald Pirkheimer. His pencil, however, was not idle. He then laid the foundation of a great reputation as a painter. Having abode four years in foreign parts, during which time he went over Germany, the Netherlands, and the Venetian States, "my father," he says, "called me back to himself at Whitsuntide, 1494." The next step was one that had a material influence on his future life. It was his marriage. From gratitude, probably, to his father, for having allowed him to become a painter, he seems to have yielded to his father's views on this most important matter. Hans Frey (a mechanist of some note), he says, "bargained with my father while I was abroad to give me his daughter to wife, a young maiden, by name Agnes, and with her two hundred florins." The marriage was in 1494, when Albert was twenty-three years of age. Three years after (1497) he exhibited a painting for the first time in public. It was "the Three Graces," holding a globe over their heads. It was usual at that time for students to exhibit one of their best works, and we learn that the diploma of Master of Painting was gained by Dürer with more than ordinary honour. says, "that no one he His father, soon after, fell sick, "in such sort," he was able to cure him; and when he saw death plainly before his eyes gave himself up willingly thereto with great patience, commending my mother to my care, and charging us to live godly." The "bargaining" which he had mentioned, seems to have bartered away the happiness of the young artist. The good Albert had married a shrew. Whether from this cause or not we won't stop to say, but we find he was soon afoot for foreign parts, and that he was not slow in proceeding to Venice, where he stayed nearly all the following year.† Albert's letters to his friend Pirkheimer are preserved at Nuremberg. He writes: "I wish you were here; there are so many pleasant companions among the Italians, who are the longer the more friendly with me." He also says: "I have given the painters a good rubbing down; who said that I was good only at engraving, but knew not how to touch colours. Now they say they have never seen finer colours." He here met with the painter Bellini, then about eighty, the father of the Venetian school, which afterwards produced Giorgoni and Titian. One = 90%. * A florin, or guilder, was worth about 9s. †This was in 1505, a year when shillings were first coined in England, and four years before gardening was introduced there from the Netherlands, from whence vegetables had thitherto been imported. of Bellini's pictures, a "Virgin and Child," produced 40007. in 1819, at Lebrun's sale in Paris. Another, a 66 Madonna," which had been carried off from thence by Napoleon to the Louvre, was, after the peace of 1815, restored to the church of St. Zacharias, where it is valued at 80007. Bellini desired to have one of Dürer's works, and praised him highly. He also asked, as a keepsake, for one of the pencils with which he drew fine lines. Dürer held out a handful, telling him to choose one, "for he could do it with them all." While at Venice he painted a full length of "Adam and Eve" for a German church, and the "Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew" for St. Mark's. The latter rose so high in public favour that the Emperor Rudolph II. sent orders that it should be bought for him at any price, and be borne on poles by strong men on foot (instead of the ordinary mode of carriage) from Venice to Prague, where it is still to be seen. As respects the "Adam and Eve," an admirer of Dürer, Gaspar Velius, said (perhaps rather profanely), "That when an angel saw it he considered that there must have been some mistake, as he did not think he had driven two such good-looking persons out of Paradise."* While at Venice, at the age of thirty-five, he began to learn to dance, that he might keep up with the customs of the place-viz. to dance, fence, and sing; but "after two lessons, which cost a ducat," he adds, "he could make nothing of it." His letters from Venice are written with great cheerfulness, except when he touches upon his return. There appears no mention of any letters from his wife; but both she and his mother seem to have been especially cared for by himself. He went to Bologna "to learn some secrets in perspective," and there met Raffaelle, with whom he had already corresponded, and who esteemed him highly. They exchanged portraits, and subsequently prints and drawings. While here he was invited to Mantua by Andrea Montegna, who from a shepherd's boy had become a great painter and engraver, but who died before Dürer arrived. From Bologna he writes: "I will come by the first convoy. Oh, how I shall freeze when away from the sun. Here I am my own master. At home I am a 'schamaroyer;'" literally a parasite, but probably a slave. He returned in 1507, with the reputation of being the best painter of his country. Vasari, in his "Lives of Painters" (published in Florence in 1538), says: "If this diligent, industrious, and universal man had been a native of Tuscany, and if he could have studied at Rome, he would have been the best painter of our country, as he was the most celebrated that Germany had then produced." From 1507 to 1520 there are scanty records of his life; but in 1511 he painted what is said to have been his masterpiece, "The Adoration of the Trinity," which is in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna. His letters to his friend Heller, of Frankfort, are preserved. In one of these he speaks of his wife Agnes as 66 our mistress of arithmetic." He mentions also the pains he had taken with a picture, "The Ascension of * "Angelus hos cernens miratus dixit, ab horto |