ADDRESS 
AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1877-78. 
BY THE REY. PROFESSOR ANTHONY, M.A., 
President. 
Mr. Vicr-Prestpent, Lapres AND GENTLEMEN, 
This year of our Lord, 1877, is notable as being the 
400th anniversary of an event which, for good and evil, has had 
an influence upon England which no one can hope to guage. 
On the 30th of June last, in the Conservatory of the Royal 
Horticultural Society, South Kensington, a distinguished company 
under the Presidency of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, m.p., 
met to inaugurate the Caxton Celebration, and so to mark the close 
of the fourth century since William Caxton first introduced the Art 
of Printing into our country. A most interesting collection of the 
methods and results of printing of every kind was brought together. 
The processes of type-casting, composing, stereotyping, electrotyp- 
ing, and printing, were shown in actual operation, and almost every 
kind of printing-machine since Caxton’s time was exhibited. But 
the chief attraction was a collection of Caxton’s actual work, more 
complete than has ever been secured before, although connoisseurs 
have a goodly number of his works in their possession. Amongst 
these treasures there was the first book ever printed in English, 
‘‘The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy,” printed by Caxton, prob- 
ably at Bruges, in 1474; and, as the most interesting of all, there 
was the first book ever printed in England, ‘‘The Dictes and 
Sayings of the Philosophers,” bearing the date 1477, and furnish- 
ing the basis of the Celebration itself. 
Such an event, both in itself and in all that it suggests, is a 
most tempting subject for the address which, in the discharge of my 
