Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1898 — Mile High View. [ARTICLE]

Mile High View.

A balloonist a mile above the earth commands q geld vUjon 83 milts rtdlu* *

Book-Making In the Middle Agee. It required a man of great parts to be a successful publisher at that time, as much as or even more than it does to-day. Such an institution, for example, as the Sorbonne or University of Paris required the highest guarantees of character, capital and literary capacity in the licensed bookseller. He must be an adept in all tbe knowledge and science of the period, as well as perfectly skilled in the mechanical needs of his business. The university, too, which was always in close touch with the church, even when its studies had begun to broaden, exercised a jealous censorship, lest some religious heresy should creep in. Whenever an error of this or even of a more trivial sort was found the transcripts were burned and the bookseller heavily fined. Sometimes his privileges might be entirely revoked, indeed, and he himself imprisoned. The bookseller conld not even fix a price on his own products. Four of the guild In Paris, for example, were sworn as appraisers by the authorities of the Sorbonne to fix the selling value of a book, ana any deviation from this was a penal offense. To students the price was fixed at twothirds of the charge asked of the general purchaser. The booksellers could not dispose of their entire stock and trade without the license of the university, which must also approve the purchaser. As an additional help to students the Sorbonne in the middle of tbe fourteenth century framed a law compelling all booksellers to keep books to lend out on hire, and this example was imitated at Toulouse, Bologna, Vienna and Oxford. In this way circulating libraries were established in the middle ages.—Harper’s Roand Table.