Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/130

120 and the cutting away of the field; the use of a fluid writing ink; the fashion of printing upon one side only of the sheet: these were features in use by both peoples. If we had a more thorough knowledge of the processes of the early European engravers on wood, other points of similarity might be found. These resemblances seem still more significant when they are considered with the fact that playing cards, supposed to be of oriental origin, were among the earliest productions of European engravers on wood. They have been regarded as a sufficient warrant for the hypothesis that our knowledge of engraving on wood must have been taken from China. It is the belief of many that block-printing was introduced in Europe by Venetian travelers of the thirteenth century, who had acquired a full knowledge of all the details of printing through long residence in China. This is a specious proposition, but it will not bear close examination.

Venice took the lead of all European cities in the establishment of commercial intercourse with China. Venetian merchants, in 1189, occupied an allotted street in, Constantinople, from which port they sent vessels through the Black Sea, with bales of merchandise, which accompanying agents introduced into Thibet, Tartary and China. To promote this traffic, Venice sent to the courts of the Eastern potentates some of her most reputable citizens as diplomatic and commercial agents. Marco Polo, the most distinguished of these embassadors, resided more than twenty years in the great empire of Cathay, or China, in high favor with the emperor, and provided with every facility for acquiring a knowledge of the arts and industry of the country. Soon after his return to Venice, in 1295, he dictated a narrative of his travels, but his statements were received with general disbelief, and they have usually been considered as extravagant and improbable. Of late years, the travels of Marco Polo have been defended as substantially truthful, but his most zealous defenders have to confess that he was remarkably credulous. It is a noteworthy circumstance that he does not describe printing or