Not, however, in the form of the ancient tablets, but transformed by mechanical and chemical science into sheets of white and pliant paper; or the numerous fibrous plants of Algeria, Cuba, and other tropical countries will be turned to account, and no longer permitted to waste their usefulness on the desert air. Even now, in France, among the Vosges Mountains, there is a paper manufactory where wood is manipulated with the most complete success. And some few years since, a newspaper paragraph informed the civilized world that a process of making paper from marble had been discovered by a canny Scotchman of Glasgow! It is not, indeed, impossible that the marble painfully hewn and engraven by our forefathers to perpetuate the memory of a bloody struggle or of some vain triumph, may in time to come, by the magic power of modern science, become a sheet of snowy tissue, whereon the fair, slight hand of beauty shall trace the dainty nothings of fashionable life!
The tablets so continually mentioned by ancient writers must be noted. They were made of parchment, thin boards, ivory, or metal, prepared to receive ink, or coated with wax and written on with a stylus, or sharp-pointed pencil. In the Fourth Book of Kings we read: "I will efface Jerusalem as tables are wont to be effaced, and I will erase and turn it, and draw the pencil over the face thereof." Herodotus and Demosthenes speak of their tablets. In Rome, they were used not only as note-books and journals, but also for correspondence in the city and its environs, while the papyrus served for letters intended to be sent to a distance. The receiver of one of these notes not unfrequently returned his answer on the same tablet. Made of African cypress and highly ornamented and inlaid, they were given as presents, precisely as portfolios, souvenirs, and note-books are nowadays. On the wax-covered tablets was generally traced the first rough copy of any document, to be afterward neatly written out either on papyrus or parchment. These wax-covered tablets were used in France until the beginning of the last century.
Two-leaved tablets were called diptychs, and were sometimes of extraordinary cost and beauty. The Roman consuls and high magistrates were accustomed, on their first appointment to office, to present their friends with ivory diptychs, exquisitely engraved and carved, and ornamented with gold.
Ancient ink was composed of lamp-black and gum-water. Pliny says that the addition of a little vinegar rendered it ineffaceable, and that a little wormwood infused in it preserved the manuscript from mice. This ink was used until the twelfth century, when our present common ink was invented.
Not only black, but also red, blue, green, and yellow inks were employed in antiquity. Sepia ink and Indian ink are mentioned by Pliny. Red ink, made from a murex, was especially esteemed, and reserved for the emperor's exclusive use, under pain of death to all infringers of the privilege. Gold and silver inks, principally used from the eighth to the tenth centuries, were also prized; writers in gold, termed chrysographers, formed a class apart among writers in general. The Imperial Library of Paris possesses several Greek Gospels, and the Livre des Heures of Charles the Bold, entirely written in gold. Few manuscripts are extant written in silver; the most celebrated are the Gospels, preserved in the Upsal Library.
The stylus, a dangerous weapon when made in iron, and proscribed by Roman law, which required it to be of bone; the painting brush, used still by the Chinese; the reed, which was cut and shaped like our modern pen, and with which some oriental nations write even now; and the feather pen, which is mentioned by an anonymous writer of the fifth century, were the general writing implements of antiquity and the middle ages. Metallic pens are also supposed to have been known; the Patriarchs of Constantinople were accustomed to sign their official acts with a silver reed, probably of the form of a pen.
Some paintings found in Herculaneum give evidence that the ancients were accustomed to make use of most, if not of all the various conveniences with which modern writers surround themselves. The writing-desk, the inkstand, the penknife, the eraser, the hone, and the powder-box were well-known. They do not seem, however, to have had the habit of sitting up to a table to write, but rested their tablet or paper on their knee, or on their left hand, as the orientals do at the present day.
DOÑA FORTUNA AND DON DINERO.[16]
FROM THE SPANISH OF FERNAN CABALLERO.