Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/195

HANS GUTENBERG 123 fused to return to his country. His mother, who watched over her son's interest at Mainz, petitioned the republic to allow him to receive as a pension a small portion of the revenues of his confiscated possessions. The republic replied that the young patrician's refusal to return to his country was a declaration of war, and that the republic did not pay its enemies. Gutenberg, persisting in his vol- untary exile and in his disdain, lived on the secret remittances of his mother. But at Strasburg he already enjoyed so great a popularity for his disposition and his acquirements, that one day, when the chief magistrate of Mainz was passing the territory of Strasburg, he was arrested by the friends of Gutenberg, shut up in a castle, and did not recover his liberty until the city of Mainz had signed a treaty which restored the exile his patrimony. Thus this youth, the great tribune of the human mind, whose invention was destined to destroy for- ever the prejudices of race, and to restore, in after-times, liberty and civil equal- ity to all the plebeians of the world, began his life, as yet unrecognized, at the head of the patrician party of his country, in these struggles between the privi- leged castes and the people. Fortune seemed to delight in the contrast. But Gutenberg's wisdom, increasing with his age, was afterward destined to reunite the people and nobility, who looked on each other as enemies. The restoration of his goods allowed young Gutenberg to satisfy his literary, religious, and artistic tastes, by travelling from town to town to study monu- ments, and visit men of all conditions celebrated for their science, their art, or even their trade. The artisans of Germany then held nearly the same rank as the artists. It was at the time when the trades, scarcely known, were confused with the arts, and when the most humble professions produced their earliest master- pieces, which, on account of their novelty, were looked upon as prodigies Gut- enberg travelled alone, on foot, carrying a knapsack containing books and clothes, like a mere student visiting the schools, or a journeyman looking for a master. He thus went through the Rhenish provinces, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and, lastly, Holland, not without an object, like a man who lets his imagination wan- der at the caprice of his footsteps, but carrying everywhere with him a fixed idea, an unchanging will led by a presentiment. This guiding star was the thought of spreading the word of God and the Bible among a vaster number of souls. Thus it was religion which, in this young wandering apostle, was seeking the soil wherein to sow a single seed, of which the fruit hereafter was to be a thou- sand various grains. It is the glory of printing that it was given to the world by religion, not by industry. Religious enthusiasm was alone worthy to give birth to the instrument of truth. What mechanical processes Gutenberg may until then have revolved in his mind, remains unknown. Whatever" they were, chance effaced them all, and brought him at once upon his great discovery. One day, at Haarlem, in Holland, the verger of the cathedral, named Lawrence Koster, with whom he had estab- lished friendly relations, showed him in the sacristy a Latin grammar, curiously wrought in engraved letters on a wooden board, for the instruction of -the semi- narists. Chance, that gratuitous teacher, had produced this approach to printing.