which he devoted the first-fruits of his art.
They were, to a certainty, religious books. The art invented for the
sake of God, and by his inspiration, began with his worship. His later
publications at Mainz are a proof of it; the divine songs of the
Psalmist, and the celebrated Latin Bible, were the first works issued at
Mainz from the machine invented by Gutenberg, and applied to the use of
the most sacred powers of man, lyrical praise of his Maker, and
lamentation for the woes of earth. Under the hands of this pious and
unfortunate man, praise and prayer were the first voices of the press.
The press ought ever to be proud of it.

[Illustration: Gutenberg's Invention.]

But great tribulation awaited him after his triumph. We have seen that
the necessity of procuring funds obliged him to take partners. The
necessity that subsequently arose of getting assistance for the
multifarious labor of a great printing establishment obliged him to
confide his occupation, and even the secret of his process, to his
partners and to a number of workmen. His partners, tired of supplying
funds to an enterprise which, for want of perfection, was not then
remunerative, refused to persevere in the ungrateful occupation.
Gutenberg begged them not to abandon him at the very moment that fortune
and glory were within his grasp. They consented to make fresh advances,
but only on condition of sharing completely his secret, his profits, his
property, and his fame.

He sold his fame to procure success to his work. The name of Gutenberg
disappeared. The firm absorbed the inventor, who soon became a mere
workman in his own workshop. It was a parallel to the case of
Christopher Columbus brought back in irons on board his own vessel, by a
crew to whom he had opened a new world.

This was not all. The heirs of one of the partners brought an action
against him to contest his invention, his property, and his right of
carrying on the work. They compelled him to appear before the judges at
Strasburg, to make him submit to some more complete and more legal
spoliation than the voluntary abandonment he had himself acknowledged.
His perplexity before the court was extreme. To justify himself, it was
necessary to enter into all the technical details of his art, which he
did not as yet wish to make completely public, reserving to himself, at
least, the secret of his hopes. The judges, being inquisitive, pressed
him with insidious questions, the answers to w