a
manuscript volume. _Tabula_, which properly means a "plank" or "board,"
now also signifies the plate of a book, and was so used by Addison, who
calls his plates "tables." _Folium_ ("a leaf") has given us the word
"folio"; and the word _liber_, originally meaning the "inner bark of a
tree," was afterward used by the Romans to signify a book; whence we
derive our words, "library," "librarian," etc. One more such etymology,
the most interesting of all, is the Greek name for the bark of a tree,
_biblos_, whence is derived the name of our sacred volume.

Before I leave this stage of the subject, I will mention the way in which
the Roman youth were taught writing. Quintilian tells us that they were
made to write through perforated tablets, so as to draw the stylus
through a kind of furrow; and we learn from Procopius that a similar
contrivance was used by the emperor Justinian for signing his name. Such
a tablet would now be called a stencil-plate, and is what to the present
day is found the most rapid and convenient mode of marking goods, only
that a brush is used instead of an iron pen or style.

Writing and materials have so much to do with the invention of printing
that I feel obliged to tarry a little longer at this preliminary stage.
The most important of all the ancient materials for writing upon were
papyrus, parchment, and vellum; and on these substances nearly all our
most valuable manuscripts were written. Papyrus, or paper-rush, is a
large fibrous plant which abounds in the marshes of Egypt, especially
near the borders of the Nile. It was manufactured into a thick sort of
paper at a very early period, Pliny says three centuries before the reign
of Alexander the Great; and Cassiodorus, who lived in the sixth century,
states that it then covered all the desks of the world. Indeed, it had
become so essential to the Greeks and Romans that the occasional scarcity
of it is recorded to have produced riots. Every man of rank and education
kept _librarii_, or book-writers, in his house; and many _servi_, or
slaves, were trained to this service, so that they were a numerous class.

Papyrus is a very durable substance, made of the innermost pellicles of
the stalk, glued together transversely, with the glutinous water of
the Nile. It was for many centuries the great staple of Egypt, and was
exported in large quantities to almost every part of Europe and Asia, but
never, it would appear, to England or Germany. After the se