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184 unjust. In the inexorable impartiality of the grinning and stalking skeleton who rudely dragged away the resisting noble and protesting priest, there was a ghastly irony which was keenly appreciated even by the illiterate.

The signs of awakening intelligence, as manifested in the general appreciation of pictures, images, playing cards and books, were entirely disregarded by the authorized teachers of the age, who could have used the method of xylographic printing by which images and playing cards were made, and could have led people from the contemplation of images and allegories of the Dance of Death, to the study of books and letters. They had all the means within reach. There were engravers and printers in Venice in 1400; there is an obscure notice of image-cutters or engravers on wood in the records of the fraternity of St. Luke in Paris for the year 1391. But