t of design,
a design in black upon white, in which the just proportion of columns
and margins and titles and initials was quite as important as the
illustrations. Perhaps Koberger found Duerer too independent or too
expensive for his taste, for we find him in his later illustrated works
employing engravers more prolific than expert. Such were Michael
Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, who drew and engraved the two
thousand illustrations in the famous Nuremberg Chronicle published by
Koberger in 1493. This remarkable work was compiled by Doctor Hartman
Schedel, of Nuremberg. It is a history of the world from the creation
down to 1493, with a supplement containing a full illustrated account of
the end of the world, the Millennium, and the last judgment. This is by
no means all. There is combined with this outline of history, not less
ambitious though perhaps not more eccentric than H. G. Wells's latest
book, a gazetteer of the world in general and of Europe in particular, a
portrait gallery of all distinguished men from Adam and Methuselah down
to the reigning emperor, kings, and pope of 1493, with many intimate
studies of the devil, and a large variety of rather substantial and
Teutonic angels. Every city in Europe is shown in a front elevation in
which the perspective reminds one of Japanese art, and the castle-towers
and bridges and river-boats all bear a strong family resemblance. The
book is full of curious material, quite apart from the quaint
illustrations. In the midst of grave affairs of state we run across a
plague of locusts, an eclipse of the sun, or a pair of lovers who died
for love. Scandalous anecdotes of kings and priests jostle the fiercest
denunciations of heretics and reformers. A page is devoted to the
heresies of Wyclif and Huss. Anti-Semitism runs rampant through its
pages. Various detailed accounts are given of the torture and murder of
Christian boys by Jews, followed by the capture and burning alive of the
conspirators. Superstition and intolerance stand side by side with a
naive mystical piety and engaging stories of the saints and martyrs. Of
all the vast transformation in human thought that was then taking form
in Italy, of all the forward-looking signs of the times, there is little
trace. From 1493 to the last dim ages of the expiring world, the
downfall of Antichrist and the setting up of the final kingdom of heaven
upon earth, seemed but a little way to Hartman Schedel, when he wrote
with m