296 The Smithsonian Institutioit 



He added : ^ 



"They present specimens of paper and printing which are 

 very creditable to the artisans of that day, ranging as they 

 do from 15 18, the year after the Reformation began, to 1546, 

 the year of Luther's death. These writings have come to us 

 in the same type and paper in which they were distributed 

 by thousands over the land at the dawn of the Reformation. 

 While the language in which they are written, both German 

 and Latin, is not as refined as that employed by scholars 

 of the present day, and while the pictorial illustrations are 

 coarse, yet these productions show the extraordinary progress 

 which the typographic art had already made in the early part 

 of the sixteenth century. Many of them have the title-pages 

 ornamented with a broad margin of wood-cut figures, most 

 of them mythological and grotesque, and all curious. They 

 are specimens of the engraving of that day, exceedingly in- 

 teresting to the student of the history of art, for these are 

 undoubted originals, which collectors of ancient prints prize 

 so highly. A few of them are unskilfully illuminated, prob- 

 ably executed by some incipient artist, who tried his hand 

 on these coarse and cheap wood-cuts. The subjects of the 

 pamphlets are diverse and curious, and the titles of many of 

 those which are controversial, as was the general custom of 

 that day, are expressed in language more forcible than re- 

 fined." 



The University of Tubingen presented twenty-eight folio 

 and quarto volumes of rare and curious incunabula. 



From the Honorable G. V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the 

 Navy, there were received 179 volumes, illustrating the phys- 

 ical geography, ethnology, and resources of the Russian 

 Empire, which had been given to him by the Czar on the 

 occasion of his visit to St. Petersburg to present a resolu- 

 tion of Congress congratulating that monarch on his escape 

 from assassination.^ 



1 " Smithsonian Report," l866, page 30. '^ Ibidtni, 1867, page 60. 



