scriptions have been found in Persepolitan characters, which seem to correspond with the name written in hieroglyphics on the same monuments; but we have never heard of any such in Babylonian characters. The distinction between these two characters lies, not in their primary forms, but in their mode of combination. The elements of both are the same: an arrow-head, either tapering, and truncated straight, or spreading and barbed, without any shaft, pretty nearly represents the two elementary forms both of Babylon and Persepolis. But the Persepolitan characters always stand detached, and never come into contact; grouped by juxta-position only, not by intersection; while the Babylonian are scarcely ever-we think never-combined without contact, forming stars, crosses, squares, and triangles in great variety.

Denon and others mention Persepolitan inscriptions found in Egypt; and a stone was discovered in Syria with parallel inscriptions in hieroglyphics and arrow-headed characters; and a vase in the French collection has the name of Xerxes written in both kinds of characters. These monuments may ultimately render us the same service at Persepolis which the Rosetta stone has done in Egypt; but, till we find evidence to the contrary, we maintain that the major part of Babylonian inscriptions are astronomical or talismanic-a few genealogical ones occurringand none as yet properly alphabetical.

Some scarabæi have been found, having on their under surface figures of very early Babylonian workmanship, and letters very similar to the Phoenician. The scarabæus and figures on the reverse link together the Egyptian and Babylonian superstitions; and the letters indicate some such derivation from the Hebrew, as the Samaritan and Phoenician demonstrate. The residence of Eber and Abram in Chaldea would give a ready opportunity of acquiring such knowledge of the Hebrew character as the corrupted dialect of Babylon might require, even if it should be thought improbable that in the confusion of Babel they might have retained such a corruption of the original character as would accord with their corrupted dialect.

When the first effects of the confusion of tongues had subsided; when mankind, dispersed by that judgment of God, became settled in their several countries; war would be but an occasional employment, for defence or for conquest, and the arts of peace the permanent occupation of each state. They would find too, that, from the diversity of climate, soil, and produce in different countries, it is as much to the mutual advantage of states to be upon friendly terms of intercourse, as it is to the interest of different individuals residing together in the same community. An individual bred up in a community, insensibly acquires the tastes, manners, and language of his nation; and

a stranger adopted into a community quickly acquires the tastes, manners, and language of his associates, insensibly drawn by the force of imitation, and prompted also by convenience and interest. That which operates upon each individual in a community, operates upon whole communities when they come into contact : reciprocity of interests and the force of imitation, acting upon all, produce concessions and accommodations of their several peculiarities, and the ready adoption by the less instructed party of all the improvements in knowledge and science which his more civilized neighbour is willing to communicate. But for this communication, the first, the indispensable pre-requisite is understanding each other's dialect; and in most instances a written character common to both parties would be necessary, first, for fixing the data, without which no progress in knowledge can be made, and then for recording this progress, and transmitting it to others.

Let it be carefully considered, that the progress of civilization in each country, and the intercourse between different countries, increasing as they advance in civilization, make it their mutual interest to facilitate every medium of communication, of which writing is the chief. A civilized people must adopt by common consent one character for writing, which all may equally understand; and one style of expression, and one meaning for the words, that all may be equally benefited. And two civilized nations, in corresponding together, must be influenced by the same desire to understand and to be understood; which would not only produce similarity in thinking and in style, but lead them to adopt each other's improvements in all points, even to the forms and arrangements of the letters, when practicable. The spread of Christianity has operated still more powerfully in producing similarity of expression and directness of purpose. The Christian religion is all revelation, and no concealment; it recognises no distinction between the learned and the unlearned, but, on the contrary, takes as its peculiar characteristic, “The poor have the Gospel preached unto them."

The similarity produced by these powerful and general motives in modern times, subjects the inconsiderate inquirer to the error of supposing that all characters may be traced to the same origin; and, Egypt being associated in his mind with the earliest records of man, and the earliest of the Egyptian characters being hieroglyphics, he hastily infers that every other character was originally hieroglyphic, and was gradually perfected and simplified into the alphabetic form. But the careful inquirer, remembering that there are certainly three distinct classes of characters, which in the early ages were applied to three distinct and incompatible purposes, will recognise this distinction even in the modern derivatives or imitations, however altered in principle and form.

The first of these classes of characters is the Alphabetic, which we hold to be, not an invention of man, but the gift of God to man. Writing existed before the giving of the Law, for Moses is commanded concerning Amalek, "Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua (Ex. xvii. 14). And we believe that it existed from the beginning; given by God to record and transmit the results of reason and meditation, as speech had been given to communicate and examine and discuss for mutual and individual edification. Man is the image of God; and that image shall be seen in all, either by conformity or by contrast. God represents himself not only as holding discourse with the creatures, but as interchanging it also between the Three Personalities of the one Godhead." Let us make man;" "The Lord said unto my Lord;"" Lo, I come to do thy will;" "This is my beloved Son;" "I know that thou hearest me always;" "The Spirit maketh intercession for us.”

:

These, and many such passages, exhibit the great prototype in God of discourse in man, who was formed after the likeness of God and the prototype of writing is exhibited in the many allusions to the "book of memorial," of "remembrance," of "life," and the "sealed book" in God's right hand; all of which sufficiently prove the fact of a legible record, understood by others as well as by the recorder. We need not stop to inquire into the circumstances of the record; whether, like the tables of the Law, it may be written by the finger of God; or whether impressed by the act of the individual on the persons and places with which, in the course assigned him by God, he has come in contact.

The character thus given by God, we maintain was the present Hebrew character, from which every other alphabet is derived, and to which all of them may be traced, both in the form and the order of the letters; and every deviation from the Hebrew may in general be historically accounted for. It is almost superfluous to expose the absurdity of supposing the Hebrew letters to have been originally hieroglyphics, though it has been gravely maintained by men of name: any one who examines their arguments will find that they rest on mere imagination; and that the same fancy which could discover the resemblance of a bull, a house, and a camel, in Aleph, Beth, and Gimel, might as easily discover it in Resh, Shin, and Tau; and we do actually know a man who is in doubt whether a hand is more strikingly represented by the single dot of the Hebrew Jod, or by the trident-shaped Jod of the Samaritans. But even if we could trace the alphabetic character to hieroglyphics, we should have made but one, and that the least important, step in our inquiry we should only have accounted for the forms; and the wonderful application of these forms to represent to the eye sounds instinct with meaning, with the same precise meaning,

understood exactly in the same manner by all who read the forms, in all climes and in all ages-this still remains a previous question, "et dignus vindice nodus."

We need not enlarge upon the small number and uniform order of the letters of the alphabet, and on the characteristic and universal distinction between pictorial and rhetorical description, which is the distinction between hieroglyphic and alphabetic writing. We need not shew how the latter begins where the former ends; that a picture may represent conditions of things and external relations, and even indicate a few of the stronger and more ordinary emotions, and the occurrences of a single moment, only; while language gives both the actions and the springs and consequences of action, with the passions which precede, accompany, and follow them; and, not confined to one moment of time, like the picture, recounts the past and predicts the future. All this, which is so true, is still more strikingly true of the hieroglyphic and the alphabetic mode of record for hieroglyphics are the least perfect of pictures, alphabetic writing is the most perfect enunciation of thought; hieroglyphics are the very rudest display of art, writing its most perfect exhibition; hieroglyphics, the more they approach towards perfection, require the more a living interpreter to explain them, while writing supersedes the necessity of explanation, being its own interpreter; the primary intention of hieroglyphics is concealment, the primary intention of writing is explanation.

:

But it may be asked, have we not symbols and hieroglyphics used as letters? Certainly we have, both in Egypt and in China. But, be it noticed, these instances arose out of a necessity created by the previous use of alphabetic writing by others. When the names of the Pharaohs had been written in Greek and Phonician, the Egyptians produced, by a combination of hieroglyphics, a clumsy imitation of the spelling; and when the Chinese set about a lexicon, they had recourse to a similar expedient for classification and for sounding their words. But these rough approximations to the rudest and most barbarous semblance of an alphabet only shew, more strikingly than if the experiment had never been made, the hopelessness of attempting to fashion hieroglyphics into the form of an alphabet, and the absurdity of tracing the origin of alphabetic writing to this

source.

The next class is the symbolic, of which the Babylonian characters is the earliest example extant; but which seems to have existed also in Egypt, before the introduction of hieroglyphics. This class consists of certain arbitrary marks or symbols, by which ideas, without either sound or form, are expressed; like the signs used by astrologers and alchemists, or the figures used in arithmetic.

The third class is the hieroglyphic, or pictorial, which, by representing the form of some known object, intimates to the beholder the qualities of that object; which qualities he is expected to apply to some individual represented by a still more conspicuous object associated therewith. This last class is properly subsidiary to no higher purpose than adulation, and is at best so enigmatic and ambiguous that it would not popularly serve even for adulation. It must soon have become, like the basso-relievos on a Greek or Roman building, unintelligible to the majority; or, like the coats of arms in heraldry, mere records of descent, with scarcely any other meaning.

These two latter classes of character are obviously defective, and incapable of answering the purposes of science without the alphabetic class. Yet the disappointment expressed by some, at not discovering more of science by deciphering the hieroglyphics, is most unreasonable: science could not be recorded in hieroglyphics, and those who expect to find it there, have not considered aright the essential unalterable properties of hieroglyphic writing.

The symbolic class is truly a record of science, but of the dry results of science, none of its intermediate steps, none of the elementary principles. We have first to discover the power of the symbols, then the principles of science which governed them-all which has been long unknown; and the inscription in the India-house has hitherto been regarded with nearly the same indifference, astonishment, or despair, as that with which one unacquainted with figures would regard the Rudolphine tables of Leibnitz.

The discoveries in Egypt which have resulted from deciphering the hieroglyphics have been rated too highly by some, and too much depreciated by others: we have been taught by them all that hieroglyphics could record, and it is unreasonable to expect more. We have learned the succession of kings in that country, and to which of those kings the existing monuments are to be attributed; we have thereby been able to reconcile the different lists of Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes, and Diodorus-a task which baffled Sir J. Marsham, Perizonius, and the ablest chronologists. We have ascertained thereby, that the Egyptian monarchy began with Menai, or Menes, and may throw into the region of mythology and fable all the names preceding Menes, as either astronomical impersonations, or corruptions of some traditional memorials of the Deluge and the patriarchs of the old world. We have also learned the state of civilization at several of the most important periods of Egyptian history, and the prowess of some of the Pharaohs, who carried their arms to Parthia and the Ganges on the east, and to Macedon and the heart of Africa on the west: that Sesostris really