Daily national Democrat., 1858-10-16
An Old Book.

The articles which have appeared from
time to time in the Free Press, in regard to
old Bibles, have had the effect to bring to our
notice one Of the rarest and most valuable
specimens of biblical literature in the world
This is volume of'six hundred pages con-
tanning the whole Bible in the Latin Ian
guage. 1t belongs to the Rev. Dr.. Duffield,
of this city. The book is made entirely of
vellum, and the printing is all done by hand,
with pen and ink. Every letter is perfect
in its shape, and cannot be distinguished, by
any imperfections of form, from the printed
letters of the present day. The shape of the
letters is, of course, different from those now
in use, but in no other respect can they be
distinguished from printed matter The inn
mense amount of labor may be conceived
from the fact that there are two columns on
each page, each of which lacks only about
six letters of being as wide as the columns of
this paper. They will average sixty lines to
a column. The columns numbering 200, we
have about $4,000 lines in the whole book.
Nothing short of lifetime could accomplish
such work. The date of this book is A..
ID. $50. 1t was consequently made $50 years
before printing was invented, and is 92S
years old There is probably nothing on
this continent in the shape of book, equal
to it in age. The velum upon which, it is
printed is of the finest kind, and is made of
the skins of young lambs and kids, dressed
and rubbed with pumice stone until IL is very
thin. 1t is somewhat thicker than common
paper, being medium between that and the
drawing paper now in use. The fine veins
of the skin are distinctly visible in many
places. A pencil mark was made by the op
orator, to guide the construction of each line.
Many pages have these lines visible on the
whole surface no effort having been made to
rub them out. Two lines running up and
and down divide the columns with mathe-
matical accuracy. At the beginning of each
chapter, highly colored ornamental letters are
placed These are the only marks of the di-
visions into verses, the chapters running
through in one paragraph to the end, and no
descriptive headings.
This invaluable relic was presented to DIR.
Duffield, by Lewis Cass, Jr, our minister
resident at Rome. He procured it of a Greek
monk, who brought it from the Greek con
vent of ST. Catherine, at the foot of Mount
Sinai. Mr.. Cass befriended this monk, who
was in trouble and he, in return, presented
scribed According to his story it is the
work of one of the ancient monk scribes in
the convent above named. When it became
known that Mr.. Cass was parting with it.,
and that it was going out of the country, the
round sum of SO 900 was offered for it by the
monks of the city of Rome. This was of
course refused, for the pleasure of placing SO
inestimable a relic in the hands of one who
can appreciate its value so well as our learn
ed divine, DR.. Duhield. At the time OF the
late fire in the Doctors house, this book was
thrown into the street, among others, and
came very near being lost. 1t was picked
up on the sidewalk, by one who recognized
it as one of DIR. Duffield's most valuable
relics, and preserved it. This Bible should
be carefully preserved and priced as vener-
able relic of an age when printing was un-
known. Detroit Free Press