tageousness of the comparison. Yet the steam-engine had not then been launched upon the ocean, and had developed only half its energies.

'So long as the arts continue to exert the influence, and to yield the rewards, which they have hitherto done, there will be no want of competent minds and hands, to carry forward their advancement. With their increasing consequence, there must also be an increasing attention to their study and dissemination. Curiosity keeps pace with the interest and magnitude of its objects. And unless the character of the present age is greatly mistaken, the time may be anticipated as near, when a knowledge of the elements and language of the arts will be as essentially requisite to a good education, as the existence of the same arts is to the present elevated condition of society.' pp. 5, 6.

Dr Bigelow's book is well suited to be the foundation of a course of instruction in this study. It is not, as might, from looking over its contents, be thought, a superficial work, gleaned hastily from books of science, and treatises on the arts, but evidently the fruit of much study and research, carried on for ten years, with the leading view of collecting, on the subjects which it embraces, what is best ascertained and of most important practical bearing. Except in the introduction, the author, throughout the work, confines himself to giving the clearest and most satisfactory account possible of the object he is describing, and he must often, one would think, have exercised great self-denial in avoiding all speculation, when most inviting, and all subjects of associated interest. His descriptions are very much condensed; sometimes, perhaps, too much so. An indolent or superficial reader would be likely to consider this a defect. For the purpose of a text-book it is an excellence, as it increases, without obscurity, the mass of materials far beyond what could have been presented, by a different mode, within the same compass.

It is strictly what it professes to be; and one who should take it as the basis of instruction in the subjects of which it treats, having thus furnished to his hand all the essential materials for his lectures, all that requires the greatest research to collect and the most care to arrange and express, might give his undivided attention to those less important but often more interesting particulars, of a historical, discursive, or speculative nature, which might be employed to introduce and recommend the solid utility of the substance of the book.

The first chapter is upon the materials used in the arts,

taken from the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. To make it interesting as it might be made, access should be open to a cabinet richly stored with the spoils of the ocean and the land, from the bone that lines the mouth of the whale, to the horn of the wild ox* of Brazil, or the buffalo of Missouri, and the tusk of the elephant; the soft skin and hair of the goat of Cashmere, and fur from the northern lakes; specimens of each variety of wood, or stone, or metal, of ornament or use, whether growing in our native forests, or taken from the quarries beneath them, or brought from the shores and mines of distant countries;

'Oro ed argento fino, e cocco, e biacca,

Indico legno lucido e sereno,

Fresco smeraldo.'

In describing them, it would be more difficult to avoid, than to select valuable and curious facts in natural history to enliven the details.

The second chapter treats of the form, condition, and strength of materials, and begins, as do most of the chapters, with exact definitions of the language to be employed. Among the authorities referred to at the end of the chapter, we miss an illustrious name. The first treatise upon this most remarkable and useful branch of mechanics was written by Galileo, with an elegance and simplicity which make his works the delight of the scholar, as they are and always have been the pride of his countrymen. His original treatise contains the clearest elementary views that have, perhaps, at any time been given; and the best illustrations are still drawn from the same source.

Let it not be thought, that the name of Galileo is irrelevant, when we are speaking of a subject which owes its origin, the best of its methods, and the most beautiful of its illustrations, to the unacknowledged ingenuity and patience of this great man.

Chapter third is upon the arts of writing and printing. The first section, upon the modes of transmitting knowledge before the invention of letters, ends with the following observations.

*Not less than seven distant places in South America send to the comb-makers in New England contributions of horns from the great herd of wild cattle, that roam the interminable plains from Patagonia to the bay of Honduras, and a practised eye distinguishes by the twist of the horn the region from which each came.

The founders of the Pyramids have not been able to convey to us their names, and the productions of the earliest sages and poets can never be appreciated from acquaintance. The symbolic sculptures, which cover the antiquities of Egypt, are now subjects of empty speculation to the curious. History must have remained uncertain and fabulous, and science been left in perpetual infancy, had it not been for the invention of written characters.' p. 53.

If the portion upon the invention of letters had been written a few months after the time at which, as we understand, it was sent to the press, the author would doubtless have caught some hints from the investigations of Champollion and the other publications upon the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphics, in regard to this invention, and might have been led to consider the symbolic sculptures' as subjects of something more than empty speculation.' The only purpose for which we now refer to these very curious discoveries, is to notice the light, which the mode pursued in deciphering the hieroglyphics has thrown upon the hitherto dark path, by which the human mind was led on to the invention of letters.

This most important of inventions may well be, as it has been, considered the most ingenious or most fortunate that has ever been made by the human mind. If we could trace it, in its several steps, we should probably find that the first hint was suggested by necessity or furnished by accident, that this was gradually wrought upon by patient and sagacious thought, and carried out to its perfection by that divine instinct of fine minds, which forbids their resting satisfied with what is faulty or incomplete.

After the obvious invention of picture-writing, or the representation of visible objects by delineating their figures, and the higher and more difficult invention of hieroglyphics, representing ideas or abstract qualities by the figures of objects having a real or supposed resemblance to them, it became necessary, on the monumental structures of the Egyptians, to represent the names of individuals. When a name was significant, as are most proper names among rude nations, it would be an obvious device to delineate the figure of the object, of which the name was significant, with some mark to show that it was not to be understood symbolically. Thus, the figure of a wolf or a cross, sculptured upon the stone, would call to mind an individual who had borne one of these

names..

Compound names of the same kind, such as wood-house, Horne-man, Dart-mouth, would present no greater difficulty; and in a language almost entirely made up of monosyllables, as the ancient language of Egypt is said to have been, nearly all the syllables were probably significative, and the syllables of most frequent occurrence significative of the most common visible objects. In such a language it would not be difficult to represent to the eye such a word as Spi-ne-to, by objects which should immediately recall the sounds of which it is composed.

This mode once adopted with significant names, or names made up of significant syllables, would be easily extended to those of different structure. Where it was found impossible exactly to hit the sound, an approximation might be made to it. In most cases, the sound of only a single syllable, or a single letter, would be indicated by a single figure, to a people speaking a language nearly monosyllabic. Where an object suggested more than one simple sound, choice or necessity might lead to consider it as representing only the initial sound. The figure of a pen, a seal, or a vase, would thus suggest only the sound of p, of s, or of v; and the figures of a hand, a ring, the mouth, and a seal, would express the name Hermes. The vowel-sounds need not be expressed, as they are omitted, to this day, in several of the oriental languages.

The Egyptian would thus have been furnished with the means of expressing any proper name in characters significant of sounds only; and it is precisely in this way, that the names of Ptolomæus and Cleopatra are found expressed on the famous Rosetta Stone, which has acted so important a part in so far solving the riddle of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

It would apparently not require a great stretch of sagacity to discover, that the figures which had been employed to express the sounds of which proper names are composed, might be applied to the expression of the sounds of all other words, and we are thus furnished with an alphabet of letters, made up of the figures of the most common visible objects. The difficulty and trouble of representing these accurately would gradually lead to the use of the outline of figures, instead of the figures themselves, or a part for the whole, so that at length only a rude resemblance would remain to the form of the original object.

The figures and names of the Hebrew letters are such as

they would have been, if invented in the way we have here supposed. A resemblance, more or less distant, to the whole or a part of such objects as the bull, a house, a camel, a door, is still to be traced in these letters, and is said to be still more striking in those of the more ancient Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenicians, according to Mr Astle, as quoted by Dr Bigelow, are thought to have the best claims to be considered the inventers of letters; and it is in their alphabet, that we most clearly perceive indications of their having been invented in the way we have endeavored to trace.

From the invention of letters, Dr Bigelow proceeds to the materials used, at different periods, in writing, and to whatever is most curious in the arts of printing and stereotyping, as they are now practised. Probably no part of the volume will be so new to the greater number of readers as this chapter. The concluding remarks are curious, as showing how near an approach had, more then once, been made to the art of printing, previous to its invention.

Although printing with moveable types is exclusively a modern art, yet there are some steps in the discovery, which have claim to greater antiquity. The Chinese have printed with their characters for more than nine hundred years, but as the nature of this character requires that much should be expressed by a single figure, they are obliged to cut each character with all its complications in a block of wood, so that their method resembles a limited kind of stereotype printing.

'Among the relics of ancient Rome, there have been found letters cut in brass and raised above the surface exactly like our printing types. Some of these contain the names of individuals, and from their shape and appendages, were evidently used for the purpose of signature, the letters being small, smooth, and even, while the ground beneath them is unequal, and rough, so that they must have been employed, not for impressions into soft substances, but for printing with colored liquids, on a surface like parchment or paper. Had the individuals, whose names were thus printed, been visited with the thought, that, by separating the letters, they might print the name of another, it is probable that the art would have been at once discovered, and that the dark ages might never have happened.' pp. 69, 70.

To illustrate skilfully the chapter upon designing and painting, would require the knowledge and taste of a painter. With a few engravings, however, and a few pictures, the subject might be made perfectly plain and interesting. Without such illustration, and the instruments referred to or described