cut into strips or layers, laid on a table
moistened with Nile water, glued together
also with Nile water, pressed and dried in
the sun, then turned out as the papyrus, by
which the world has learnt more than the
iconoclasts of the present day are willing to
allow. A kind of size, made of bread steeped
in boiling water passed through a cloth, was
spread carefully over them, and the papyri,
such as we see them now in the mummy
cases, were then taken from the manufactories
to be sold to the Egyptian public in Egyptian
shops. Some of them were thirty or even
more feet long. The longest we have as yet
was thirty feet. In later times, each city of
note in the Delta had its paper-making speciality.
Sais was famous for her charta
Saitica; and other cities, of too learned names
for a general article, likewise put forth their
Bath post in the times of the Ptolemies. But
the best was the charta Claudia, so called
from the Emperor Claudius, who added
another pellicle to the roll—there were only
two before—and widened the sheet to
thirteen inches. Then there was the
amphitheatrica, famous for being that on which the
Gracchi wrote: more famous still for being
in preservation twenty years ago (perhaps it
is so yet) at the Abbey of Saint Germain des
Près, with part of the Gospel of Saint Augustine
written on it. That MS. must be, at the
least, one thousand two hundred years old.
Then there was the sacred paper, formerly
called after its use, but later after Augustus
and Livia, when men were made into gods,
and the Earth and the fulness thereof, was
laid at their feet. These paper sponsors
certainly improved their child, for they
made it whiter and broader, and raised it
to greater excellence. There was the blue
shop paper, called literally shop paper; and
there was the old bormbycina, or cotton
paper, which destroyed the sale of the
Cyperus papyrus, and set it aside. This
cotton paper was an Egyptian invention, and,
at the time a most blessed one. It came just
when most wanted, and supplied the world
with good, cheap, and serviceable paper at a
time when the papyrus was exorbitantly
dear, inordinately protected, and almost
impossible to procure. Cotton paper, in its
turn, was superseded by a better
invention; but, to this day, it is an article of
Levantine manufacture and trade. Once, it
was among the greatest sources of Levantine
wealth. How much needed this, or some
such "find," was at the time may be judged
from the fact that the Greeks were in the
habit of erasing the writing of Polybius,
Diodorus Siculus, and others, whose every
word now would be a talent of gold to the
discoverer, for the sake of the parchment on
which it was written. The Romans had
the same practice. They used both the
Egyptian papyrus and parchment, and when
both grew dear and scarce, erased the
previous writing for the sake of economy. It
was then called a palimpsest. Cicero praises
his friend Trebantius for being so economical
as to write on a palimpsest, but "wonders
what those writings could have been which
were considered of less importance than a
letter." The oldest manuscript on cotton
paper is one which Father Montfauçon saw
in the French king's library, bearing the date
of ten hundred and fifty, but was supposed to
belong to the ninth century. "Roger, king
of Sicily, says, in a diploma written in eleven
hundred and forty-five," to quote an old
author, "that he had renewed on parchment
a charter which had been written on paper of
cotton in the year eleven hundred, and another
which was dated in the year eleven hundred
and twelve. About the same time, Irene,
the Empress, in the statutes for some religious
houses at Constantinople, says that she had
left three copies of the same statutes, two on
parchment and one on paper of cotton."
Cotton paper is strong, white, and fine-grained.
It is often mixed with linen, which,
however, it does not equal.

The Romans first made use of bark; long
rolls of bark, or the thin membrane found in
some trees between the bark and the true
heart-wood. Maple, plane, elm, beech, lime,
and mulberry were the principal woods they
used; beating the pellicle thin, then drying
it, so as to destroy all moisture or lessen its
tendency to decay. They wrote on only one
side of their books, or rolls, and stained the
other side saffron colour, or with the yellow
dye of the cedar. What would the stately
old Roman, who disdained even the under
side of his roll, have said to our crossed and
recrossed—nay, sometimes triply crossed—
letters? How he would have stamped his
buskined feet, and sworn by Hades and by
Bacchus, that he would not endure such
indignity, if a sentimental juvenile fresh from
the Grecian schools had talked Plato and
Aristotle to him on the palimpsest, and
written in a mathematical hand crossed all
over, and with a badly pointed stylus into
the bargain! Yet that is what our college
youth do to their friends with whom they
are on terms of intellectual confidence; and
hard times it is for those friends when the
day of reading and answering arrives. We
might take example of our Latin forbears, in
this prodigality of writing-room, with great
advantage to ourselves and the whole
community which corresponds by the post. The
roll was kept in a stained-parchment case,
generally purple or yellow, and called
literally a purple robe, or cloak, for the roll.
The title was written in red, on small
strips of parchment, and often adorned with
a portrait of the author. Bark-paper, was
brittle, and easily peeled off; parchment,
papyrus, and cotton-paper, were each and
all superior, as the old Latins soon found
out. They used the linden for their diptycha,
or pocket-books, cutting it into very thin
boards, on both sides of which they wrote