was cotemporary with King David. His alphabet contained only sixteen letters. The rest were afterward added, according as signs for proper sounds were found to be wanting. The Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman alphabets agree so much in the figure, names and arrangement of the letters, as amounts to demonstration that they were derived originally from the same source.

The ancient order of writing was from the right hand to the left. This method as appears from some very old inscriptions,prevailed even among the Greeks. They afterward used to write their lines alternately from the right to the left, and from the left to the right. The inscription on the famous Sigæan monument is a specimen of this mode of writing; which continued till the days of Solon, the celebrated Legislator of Athens. At length, the motion from the left hand to the right, being found more natural and convenient, this order of writing was adopted by all the nations of Europe.

Writing was first exhibited on pillars and tables of stone; afterwards on plates of the softer metals. As it became more common, the leaves and bark of certain trees were used in some countries; and in others tablets of wood, covered with a thin coat of soft wax, on which the impression was made with a stylus of iron. Parchment, made of the hides of animals, was an invention of later times. Paper was not invented before the fourteenth century.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE.

THE common division of Speech into eight parts, nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions, is not very accurate; since under the general term of nouns, it comprehends both substantives and adjectives, which are parts of speech essentially distinct. Yet, as we

are most accustomed to this division, and as logical exactness is not necessary to our present design, we shall adopt these terms, which habit has made familiar to us.

Substantive Nouns are the foundation of Grammar, and the most ancient part of speech. When men had advanced beyond simple interjections or exclamations of passion, and had begun to communicate their ideas to each other, they would be obliged to assign names to objects by which they were surrounded. Wherever a savage looked, he beheld forests and trees. To distinguish each by a separate name, would have been endless. Their common qualities, such as springing from a root, and bearing branches and leaves,would suggest a general idea and a general name. The genus, tree, was afterwards subdivided into its several species of oak, elm, ash, &c. upon experience and ob

servation.

Still, however, only general terms were used in speech. For oak, elm and ash, were names of whole classes of objects, each of which comprehended an immense number of undistinguished individuals. Thus, when the nouns man, lion, or tree, were mentioned in conversation, it could not be known which man, lion, or tree was meant among the multitude comprehended under one name. Hence arose a very

useful contrivance for determining the individual object - intended, by mean of that part of speech called the Article. In English, we have two articles, a and the a is more general, the more definite. The Greeks had but one, which agrees with our definite article the. They supplied the place of our article a by the absence of their article; thus, ANTHROPOS signifies a man; o ANTHROPOS, the man. The Latins had no article; but in the room of it used the pronouns hic, ille, iste. This, however, seems a defect in their language; since articles certainly contribute much to perspicuity and precision.

To perceive the truth of this remark, observe the different imports of the following expressions: "The

son of a king, the son of the king, a son of the king's." Each of these three phrases has a separate meaning, too obvious to be misunderstood. But, in Latin, "filius regis" is entirely undetermined; it may bear either of the three senses mentioned.

Beside this quality of being defined by the article, three affections belong to nouns, number, gender, and case, which deserve to be considered.

Number, as it makes a noun significant of one or more, is singular or plural; a distinction found in all tongues, which must have been coeval with the origin of language, since there were few things which men had more frequent necessity of expressing, than the distinction between one and more. In the Hebrew, Greek, and some other ancient languages, we find not only a plural, bút a dual number; the origin of which may very naturally be accounted for, as separate terms of numbering were yet undiscovered, and one, two, and many, were all, or at least the principal numeral distinctions which men at first had any occasion to make.

Gender, which is founded on the distinction of the two sexes, can with propriety be applied to the names of living creatures only. All other nouns ought to be of the neuter gender. Yet in most languages the same distinction is applied to a great number of inanimate objects. Thus, in the Latin tongue, ensis, a sword is masculine; sagitta, an arrow, is feminine. And this assignation of sex to inanimate ob jects often appears entirely capricious. In the Greek and Latin, however, all inanimate objects are not distributed into masculine and feminine; but many of them are classed, where all ought to be, under the neuter gender; as, saxum, a rock; mare, the sea. But in the French and Italian tongues, the neuter gender is wholly unknown, all their names of inani-mate objects being put upon the same footing with those of living creatures, and distributed without reserve into masculine and feminine. In the English language, all nouns, literally used, that are the names.

of living creatures, are neuter; and ours is, perhaps, the only tongue (except the Chinese, which is said to resemble it in this particular) in which the distinction of gender is philosophically applied.

Case denotes the state or relation which one object bears to another, by some variation of the name of that object; generally in the final letters, and, by some languages, in the initial. All tongues, however, do not agree in this mode of expression. Declension is used by the Greek and Latin; but in the English, French, and Italian, it is not found; or, at most, it exists in a very imperfect state. These languages express the relations of objects by prepositions, which are the names of those relations prefixed to the names of objects. English nouns have no case, except a sort of genitive, commonly formed by adding the letter s to the noun; as when we say, "Pope's Dunciad," meaning the Dunciad of Pope.

Whether the moderns have given beauty or utility to language, by the abolition of cases, may perhaps, be doubted. They have, however, certainly rendered it more simple, by removing that intricacy which arose from different forms of declension, and from the irregularities of the several declensions. But in obtaining this simplicity, it must be confessed, we have filled language with a multitude of those little words, called prepositions, which, by perpetually occurring in every sentence, encumber speech; and, by rendering it more prolix, enervate its force. The sound of modern language is also less agreeable to the ear, being deprived of that variety and sweetness which arose from the length of words, and the change of terminations occasioned by cases, in the Greek and Latin. But perhaps the greatest disadvantage we sustain by the abolition of cases, is the loss of that liberty of transposition in the arrangement of words, which the ancient languages enjoyed.

Pronouns are the representatives of nouns, and are subject to the same modifications of number, gender and case. We may observe, however, that the pro

nouns of the first and second person, I and thou, have no distinction of gender in any language; for, as they always refer to persons present, their sex must be known, and therefore needs not to be marked by their pronouns. But as the third person may be absent, or unknown, the distinction of gender there becomes requisite; and accordingly in English it hath all the three genders, he, she, it.

Adjectives, as strong, weak, handsome, ugly, are the plainest and most simple in that class of words which are termed attributive. They are common to all languages, and must have been very early invented; since objects could neither be distinguished nor treated of in discourse, before names were assigned to their different qualities.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE.....ENGLISH TONGUE.

OF all the parts of speech, Verbs are by far the most complex and useful. From their importance, we may justly conclude that they were coeval with the origin of language; though a long time must have been requisite to rear them up to that accuracy which they now possess.

The tenses were contrived to mark the several distinctions of time. We commonly think of no more than its three great divisions, the past, the present, and the future; and we might suppose that, if verbs had been so contrived as merely to express these, no more was necessary. But language proceeds with much greater subtilty. It divides time into its several moments; it regards it as never standing still, but always flowing; things past, as more or less distant; and things future, as more or less remote, by different gradations. Hence the variety of tenses in almost every language.

The present may indeed be always regarded as one indivisible point, which admits no variety; "I am,