wagon," the ceorl's wain, the pole, or shaft, or draught tree of a carriage, and Bourns the drover or wagoner (table ii., fig. 3). The supreme god Woden was called the Lord of the Wain, Vagna-rúni. 6. But in this cluster of stars, both huntsmen and herdsmen alike perceived, as their language reveals, the exercise of force, the energy of axial rotation.

It is interesting to observe, in conclusion, that this stupendous revolution of the heavenly bodies was, after all, only an appearance, due in fact to nothing more than the turning round of our own little earth. And we may well remember also that the energies that environ us, and that fill our minds with astonishment and awe, are nothing more than a multiplication of the forces associated with inconceivably minute atoms. The atom that alone would be an utterly negligible quantity, the centre of power so excessively minute as to be beyond all human ken and computation, by its mere numerical aggregation with atoms similar to itself produces all that we see and know and feel.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED

THE

IN MANCHESTER?

BY WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

HE answer to this question is not so obvious as might at first be expected. There was in the Lancashire of Elizabeth's days two secret presses. From one there issued a number of Roman Catholic books. This was probably located at Lostock, the seat of the Andertons. The other was the wandering printing press which gave birth to the attacks of Martin Marprelate upon the Anglican episcopate. This was seized by the Earl of Derby in Newton Lane, near Manchester. The printers thus apprehended were examined at Lambeth, 15th February, 1588, when Hodgkins and his assistants, Symms and Tomlyn, confessed that they had printed part of a book entitled More Work for the Cooper. "They had printed thereof about six a quire of one side before they were apprehended." The chief controller of the press, Waldegrave, escaped, and in these poor persecuted printers we must recognise the proto-typographers of Manchester. No trace remains of More Work for the Cooper. The sheets that fell into the hands of the authorities do not appear to have been preserved. Putting aside the claims of this anti-prelatical treatise, we have to pass from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Many tracts and books

by local men, and relating to local affairs, were printed before 1719, but that appears to be the date of the first book printed in Manchester. The title page is here reproduced :

"Mathematical Lectures; being the first and second that were read to the Mathematical Society at Manchester. By the late ingenious Mathematician John Jackson Manchester; printed by Roger Adams in the Parsonage, and sold by William Clayton, Bookseller, at the Conduit, 1719." (Octavo.)

The claims of Jackson's Lectures were stated by the present writer in Notes and Queries (see fourth series, iii. 97, and vii. 64) and in his Handbook to the Public Libraries of Manchester and Salford. Some further correspondence appeared in Local Gleanings (vol. i., p. 54), and an extract was given from one of William Ford's catalogues, which, if accurate, would show that there was a local press at work in 1664. Ford has catalogued a book in this fashion :

"A Guide to Heaven from the Word; Good Counsel how to close savingly with Christ; Serious Questions for Morning and Evening; Rules for the due observance of the Lord's Day.

Manchester, printed at Smithy Door, 1664.

32mo."

Apparently nothing could be clearer or less open to doubt. After a careful look out for the book, a copy has been secured and is now before me. The title reads:

"A Guide to Heaven from the Word. Good counsel how to close savingly with Christ. Serious Questions for Morning and Evening; and rules for the due observation of the Lord's Day. John 5. 39. Search the Scriptures. Manchester: Printed by T. Harper, Smithy Door." (32m0, pp. 100.)