and firm believers in Divine Revelation, naturally refer to the Bible. This oldest book extant contains the only rational cosmogony known to the ancient nations: and this record represents the first human inhabitants of this earth, not only as reasoning and speaking animals, but also as in a state of high perfection and happiness, of part of which they were deprived on account of their disobedience to the revealed will of their Creator.

Those who maintain that speech is a mere human invention, suppose men at first to have herded together without government or subordination :-then to have formed political societies for mutual defence and protection;—and thus, by their own exertions, to have advanced from the grossest ignorance to the highest refinements of science. But in reply to this conjecture, it is confidently asserted that there is not upon the records of history a single instance well authenticated, of a people emerging by their own efforts, from barbarism to civilization. There have been indeed many nations raised from the state of savages: they were, however, as it is well known, polished, not by their own repeated exertions, but by the influence of individuals, or colonies, from nations more enlightened than themselves. The original savages of Greece were tamed by the Pelasgi, a foreign tribe; and were afterwards further polished by Orpheus, Cecrops, Cadmus, and others, who derived their knowledge from Egypt and the East. The ancient Romans, a ferocious and motley crew, received the forms of law and religion from a succession of foreign kings; and the conquests of Rome, at a later period, contributed to civilize the rest of Europe.

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Mankind, it is also said by some speculators, must have existed for ages, and formed large political societies before language could have been invented but this proposition we altogether deny; assured that, besides the non-existence of any record of such a state of things, it was in its own nature impossible. The idea of political societies being organized without language involves a contradiction and an absurdity. Certainly no rational account of the origin of speech can be given besides that of Moses in the book of Genesis,—that it was a creation endowment, and the immediate perfect gift of God.

Returning to the subject of letters and writing: consider the various and extensive uses to which letters are applied: they are the means of universal correspondence in all countries and through all ages where they are known.

Letters are the sure means of all credible history; and by these we converse with the mighty and illustrious dead of the remotest ages. Reflect also on the simplicity of the elements of the art of writing: a few literary signs or marks arranged to express intelligibly the whole compass of human ideas for which we have any words, and expose to sight every sentiment which may either be uttered or conceived. To communities this art is of inexpressible value; and scarcely less so is it to be esteemed by individuals. It readily ministers to all our intercourse with others, in business, speculation, or friendship; and it serves to convey our whole sentiments to any distance, with ease and perspicuity, with secresy and expedition.

Most truly astonishing to every reflecting mind is this invaluable art of writing. This glorious art,' says a learned and eloquent author, gives distant regions the privilege of vicinity, and distant ages that of contemporiety. By this means we can in a sense converse with the great Father of mankind in Paradise, and with Noah in the ark. This may be said to bring all the successive generations of human kind upon the stage together, and to unite all their discoveries and improvements into one common stock for the use of the present age. So that whatever sciences the sagacity of the elder times hath invented, or improved, are hereby conveyed to us; from which we are to advance for the further enriching and augmentation of the treasury of knowledge. All great authors light their lamps at the fire which burns so strong in the great ancients. To a Homer we owe a Virgil and a Milton; to a Demosthenes we are in part indebted for the new wonders of oratory in a Tully; and to an Euclid and Archimedes, the world is in part to ascribe it, that all its expectations are exceeded by a Newton and I doubt not but he may have a successor greater than himself, setting forward from that point in the journey of science where a Newton stood still. And though it must be allowed, that writing may transmit bad as well as good books, the dreams of Epicurus, as well as the sublime sentiments of Plato or Xenophon, yet even bad books, frequently become very useful to the world, by occasioning excellent answers to them, which might not have been undertaken but for such objectors. By this art also are all the eminent virtues of ancient times preserved in their lustre and freshness, for our pattern and imitation; and, though the memory of ancient vices may survive in history, this may be for our warning and admonition.

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And hereby the noble heart may be warmed with the finest of all social passions, love of liberty, and of their country from age to age.

And finally, this divine art has been the instrument of conveying from age to age, the uncorrupted oracles of inspired truth, and affording us who are not honoured with personal revelations, daily access to, and familiar perusal of, the Holy Oracles in which we are taught all that is necessary to be done for the present, and what is to be hoped or feared for futurity; opening all the scenes of past, present, and to come, as far as necessary.

This sacred volume, God, by proper evidence, and credentials, stamped with his own authority; and in this way preserves it for a rule for all men, without the necessity of repetition, in its authentic and genuine purity:-so that writing is one great means of correspondence between God and man!'

Letters being of such incalculable importance to society and to individuals-both for civil and sacred purposes, it cannot be a matter of wonder that the curiosity of the learned has been exercised to the utmost in the investigation of the origin of the valuable art. Differences of opinion, as on most other subjects, exist in relation to this; some regarding them as of human invention; others believing them to have been the immediate gift of God, communicated by Divine Revelation.

Those who maintain the human origin of letters, reckon them of very high antiquity, the happy invention of the active sagacity of man. Some have considered writing to have been almost coeval with mankind, and among the earliest contrivances of human ingenuity. Among these is the learned Dr. Shuckford, and yet he regards it as being very astonishing that it should have originated, in an infant state of society, so near to the beginning of the world. He thus expresses his acknowledgment-That men should immediately fall on such a project, to express sounds by letters, and expose to sight all that may be said or thought in about twenty characters variously placed, exceeds the highest notion we can have of the capacities with which we are endowed.' This extraordinary statement contains suppositions which many regard as altogether contradictory; and at the same time, it refers to no evidence on which to rest the opinion which is sought to be maintained.

But although some have ascribed this invention to the first men, others have given the glory of it to later ages, and to particular nations; and Pliny, a learned Roman,

declares his opinion, that letters were of Assyrian original; at the same time mentioning the Egyptians and Phenicians as being competitors for that distinguished honour. However the majority of the ancient Pagan authors are unanimous in ascribing its origin not only to one nation, but to one man; attributing it to the Egyptian Thoth, Taut, Taautus, or Mercury.

Sanchoniathon, the most ancient Pagan historian, a native of Phenicia, declares that he was the first that wrote records. Plato affirms that the first invention of letters was in Egypt, by this Thoth; but it is doubtful,' he says, 'whether he were a god or a man.' Diodorus Siculus mentions the Egyptian Mercury as the inventor of letters, and of most other useful arts. In another place he asserts that the Syrians were the inventors of letters, and that the Phenicians learned them from that people.'

Hieroglyphical characters, in a sort of picture writing, demands some consideration, perhaps in this place; inasmuch as that for which the priests of Egypt were so famous, is known to have been very ancient. Moses,' it will be remembered, was instructed by them, and, as it is recorded, 'was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'

Mr. Astle, a learned antiquarian, in his work On the Origin of Writing,' thus describes that curious art :-'In order to give a clear idea of the several kinds of Egyptian writing, it will be proper to observe, that this writing was of four kinds-the first HIEROGLYPHIC, the second SYMBOLIC, the third EPISTOLIC, and the fourth and last

HIEROGRAMMATIC.'

Porphyry, speaking of Pythagoras, informs us that he sojourned with the priests in Egypt, and learnt the wisdom and language of the country, together with the three sorts of letters, the epistolic, the hieroglyphic, and the symbolic, of which, the hieroglyphic expressed the meaning of the writer by an imitation of the thing intended to be expressed; and the symbolic by allegorical enigmas.' Clement Alexandrinus is larger and more explicit :-' Now those who were instructed in the Egyptian wisdom learned, first of all, the method of their several sorts of letter; the first of which is called epistolic; the second sacerdotal, as being used by the sacred scribes; the last with which they conclude their instructions, hieroglyphical. Of these different methods, the one is in the plain and common way of writing, by the first elements of words or letters of an alphabet; the other by symbols. Of the symbolic way of

writing, which is of three kinds; the first is, that plain and common one, of imitating the figure of the thing represented; the second is by tropical marks; and the third, in a contrary way of allegorizing by enigmas.

Of the first sort, namely, by a plain and direct imitation of the figure, let this stand for an instance,—to signify the sun, they made a circle; the moon, a semi-circle. The second, or tropical way of writing, is by changing and transferring the object with justness and propriety; this they do sometimes by a simple change, sometimes by a complex multifarious transformation: thus they have engraven on stone and pillars, the praises of their kings, under the cover of theologic fables. Of the third sort, by enigmas; take this example, the oblique course of the stars, occasioned their representing them by the bodies of serpents; but the sun they likened to a scarabaeus, because this insect makes a round ball of beasts dung, and rolls it circularly with its face opposed to that luminary.

The Egyptians, in the most early ages, wrote, like all other infant nations, by pictures, of which rude original essays some traces are yet remaining among the hieroglyphics of Horapollo, who tells us, that the ancient Egyptians painted a mans' two feet in water to signify a fuller; and smoke ascending to denote fire. But to render this rude invention less incommodious they soon devised the more artful and expeditious way of putting the principal part for the whole, or by putting one thing of resembling qualities for another. These alterations in the manner of delineating hieroglyphic figures, produced and perfected another character, which has been called the running hand of hieroglyphics, resembling the Chinese writing, which, having been first formed by the outlines of each figure, became at length a kind of marks; the natural effects of which were, that the constant use of them would take off the attention from the symbol, and fix it on the thing signified.

'Apuleius describes the sacred book, or ritual of the Egyptians, as partly written in symbolic, and partly in these hieroglyphic characters of arbitrary institution, resembling the Chinese, in the following manner:-' He,' the hieroglyphant, drew out certain books from the secret repositories of the sanctuary, written in unknown characters, which contained the words of the sacred formula compendiously expressed, partly by figures of animals, and partly by certain marks or notes, intricately knotted, re