On the above words of Caxton “in the Abbey of Westminster,” Mr. C. Knight, in his excellent biography of the old printer, observes, “they leave no doubt that beneath the actual roof of some portion of the Abbey he carried on his art.”  Stow says “that Caxton was the first that carried on his art in the Abbey.”  Dugdale, in his Monasticon, speaking of Caxton, says, “he erected his office in one of the side chapels of the Abbey.”  MR. NICHOLS, quoting from Stow, also informs us that printing-presses were, soon after the introduction of the art, erected in the Abbey of St. Albans, St. Augustin at Canterbury, and other monasteries; he also informs us that the scriptorium of the monasteries had ever been the manufactory of books, and these places it is well known formed a portion of the abbeys themselves, and were not in detached buildings similar to the Almonry at Westminster, which was situated some two or three hundred yards distant from the Abbey.  I think it very likely, when the press was to supersede the pen in the work of book-making, that its capabilities would be first tried in the very place which had been used for the object it was designed to accomplish.  This idea seems to be confirmed by the tradition that a printer’s office has ever been called a chapel, a fact which is beautifully alluded to by Mr. Creevy in his poem entitled The Press:—­

  “Yet stands the chapel in yon Gothic shrine,
  Where wrought the father of our English line,
  Our art was hail’d from kingdoms far abroad,
  And cherish’d in the hallow’d house of God;
  From which we learn the homage it received
  And how our sires its heavenly birth believed. 
  Each printer hence, howe’er unblest his walls,
  E’en to this day, his house a chapel calls.”

Mr. Nichols acknowledges that what he calls a vulgar error was current and popular, that in some part of the Abbey Caxton did erect his press, yet we are expected to submit to the almost unsupported dictum of that gentleman, and renounce altogether the old and almost universal idea.  With respect to his alarm that the vulgar error is about to be further propagated by an engraving, wherein the mistaken draftsman has deliberately represented the printers at work within the consecrated walls of the church itself, I may be permitted to say, on behalf of the painter, that he has erected his press not even on the basement of one of the Abbey chapels, but in an upper story, a beautiful screen separating the workplace from the more sacred part of the building.

JOHN CROPP.

* * * * *

COLD HARBOUR.

(Vol. i., p. 60.; Vol. ii., p. 159.)

I beg leave to inform you that Yorkshire has its “Cold Harbour,” and for the origin of the term, I subjoin a communication sent me by my father:—­