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marks or characters, presented to the eye, and which we call writing, this further method, when absent, of mutual communication one with another

34. Written characters are of two sorts: they are either signs for things, or signs for words. The pictures, hieroglyphics, and symbols, employed by the ancient nations, are signs of things, and belong to the former class; the alphabetical characters, now employed by all Europeans, are signs for words, and belong to the latter class.

Illus. Pictures were, undoubtedly, the first essay toward writing. Imitation is natural to man; children copy or trace the likeness of sensible objects, before they can signify the names of those objects by written characters. The savage, to intimate that his father had vanquished an enemy, would draw the figure of one man stretched upon the earth, and of another standing over him with a deadly weapon in his hand. When the Mexicans sent intelligence to Montezuma, their prince, of the arrival of the Spaniards in the bay of Campeachy, they scratched pictures of the men, horses, and artillery, that they had seen, and conveyed these to their monarch. The chieftain understood them, and immediately dispatched an embassy to meet the Spanish commander.

Obs. Historical pictures are, however, but extremely imperfect records of important transactions. They do, indeed, delineate external events; but they cannot transmit their memory through a long succession of ages; and they fail entirely to exhibit such qualities as are most visible to the eye, or to convey, by description, any idea of the dispositions or words of men.

35. This rude attempt towards writing, was, in process of time, improved by the invention of what are called hieroglyphical characters. These may be considered as the second stage in the art of writing, as they represented intellectual conceptions, or those not suggested by any external or visible objects. The analogy or resemblance which such symbols were supposed to bear to the objects, was conventional, but liable to forced and ambiguous allusions.

Illus. Thus an eye was the hieroglyphical symbol of knowledge; a circle, of eternity, which has neither beginning nor end; ingratitude was denominated by a riper; imprudence, by a fly; wisdom, by an ant; victory, by a hawk; a dutiful child, by a stork; and a wretch-a man universally shunned-by an eel, which is not to be found in company with other fishes.

Corol. But these properties of objects were merely imaginary; and the conjunction, or compounding of the characters, rendered them obscure, and expressed indistinctly the connections and relations of the objects which they represented. Hence, this species of writing could be no other than enigmatical, and confused in the highest degree; and must have been a very imperfect vehicle of knowledge of any kind.

Obs. There is no reason however to suppose that the priests of

Egypt, among whom hieroglyphical characters were first found, and who were also the instructors of their countrymen, introduced and employed them for the purpose of concealing their knowledge from the vulgar. The latter are little troublesome about the acquisition of useful knowledge in any state of society; and the former were too enlightened not to know, that one of the principal pleasures and honours attending the possession of knowledge, is to instruct others.

36. As writing advanced, from pictures of visible objects, to hieroglyphics, or symbols of things invisible; from these latter it advanced, among some nations, to simple arbitrary marks, which stood for objects, but without any resemblance or analogy to the objects signified.

Illus. 1. Of this nature, was the method of writing practised among the Peruvians. They made use of small cords of different colors; and upon these, by means of knots of various sizes, and differently ranged, they contrived signs for giving information, and communicating their thoughts to one another; but this invention afforded less security against frequent and gross mistakes, than the hieroglyphic archetypes of abstract ideas. (Corol. Art. 35.)

2. The use of hieroglyphical characters still exists in China, where they have been brought to greater perfection than in any other quarter of the globe. But every idea is expressed by a separate character. The characters, it is said, amount to upwards of 70,000. An acquaintance with the means of communicating knowledge, is, therefore, the business of a whole life, and must greatly retard the progress of all science. In short, science in China is always in a state of infancy.

3. Our arithmetical figures, which we have derived from the Arabians, are significant marks, precisely of the same nature with the Chinese characters. They have no dependence on words; but each figure denotes an object; denotes the number for which it stands. (Illus. 5.)

4. The Japanese, the Tonquinese, and the Coræans, speak different languages from one another, and from the inhabitants of China, but use, with these last people, the same written characters; a proof that the Chinese characters are like hieroglyphics, independent of language.

5. In like manner the Italians, French, Spaniards, and English, speak different languages, but the Arabic characters 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. are, on being presented to the eye, equally understood by those four nations, as signs of things, not of words. Thus, 4 may be four ships, four men, four trees, four years; in short, four things. (Illus. 3.)

37. A combination of sounds forms, in various ways, all the variety of words in spoken language. These sounds are few, and are continually recurring for repetition in discourse. They would lead to the invention of an alphabet of syllables. A sign, or mark, for each of these syllables, would form an alphabet of letters. The number of these marks, or characters, would be equal to the number of sounds or syllables. These sounds reduced to their simple elements of a few vowels and consonants, indicated by a par

ticular sign to each, would form what we now call letters. Some happy genius taught men how, by the combinations of these letters, to put in writing all the different words, or associations of sound, which were employed in speech.

Obs. Such seem to have been the introductory steps to the art of writing; but the darkness of remote antiquity has concealed the great inventor's name of this sublime and refined discovery, and deprived him of those honours which, were it known, would still be paid to his memory, by all the lovers of knowledge and learning.

38. The universal tradition among the ancients is, that letters were first imported into Greece by Cadmus, the Phonician, at least 3000 years ago; and from Greece dispersed over the western part of the world. The alphabet of Cadmus consisted only of sixteen letters, but it comprehended all the original sounds, which are said to be only thirteen. The remaining letters were afterwards added, according as signs for proper sounds were said to be wanting.

Illus. The Roman alphabet, which obtains with us, and with most of the European nations, is, with a few variations, evidently formed on that of the Greeks. And all learned men observe, that the Greek characters especially, according to the manner in which they are formed in the oldest inscriptions, have a remarkable conformity to the Hebrew or Samaritan characters, which, it is agreed, are the same with the Phoenician for Alphabet of Cadmus.

39. The most ancient method of writing seems to have been in lines running from right to left. This method is still retained in the Hebrew language.

Obs. The Greeks improved upon this method, and wrote in lines alternately from the right to the left, which was called Boustrophedon; or writing after the manner in which oxen plough the ground. About the time of Solon, the Athenian legislator, the custom is said to have been introduced, and which still prevsils, of writing in lines from left to right.

40. The writing of antiquity was a species of engraving. Pillars, and tables of stone, were first employed for this purpose, and afterwards, plates of the softer metals, such as lead; or tables of wax and skins of parchment. A polished point of iron called a stilus was used to scratch letters on the wax; but the writing on parchment was performed with pen and ink. (Art. 41. Illus. 1. and 2.)

Obs. 1. On the parchment were written books and records, and every kind of composition which its author wished to preserve; on the tablets of wax temporary matters of business, and epistles that were not designed for the inspection of a third person's eyes. The writing on parchment was the most expensive, but the most permanent; that on wax, the cheapest and readiest, but the least durable, (Illus. 1. Art. 41.)

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2. Our present method of writing on paper, is an invention of no higher antiquity than the 14th century and the invention of printing was reserved for an obscure monk in the beginning of the 15th. This inventor might probably receive a hint toward this invention, from the Roman practice of carving letters on boards of wood, and of employing them to abridge the trouble of writing, by stamping names and inscriptions on parchment and wax.

CHAPTER VI.

A COMPARISON

OF SPOKEN WITH WRITTEN LANGUAGE: OR,

Of Words uttered in our hearing, with Words represented to the eye.

41. THE advantages of writing above speech are, that writing is both a more extensive, and a more permanent method of communicating our thoughts to mankind.

Illus. 1. More extensive, as it is not confined within the narrow cirele of those who hear our words; but, by means of written characters, we can send our thoughts abroad, and propagate them through the world; we can thus lift our voice, so as to speak to those to whom, in our own country, we may not have access, and to men of the most distant regions of the earth. (Obs. 1. Art. 40.)

2. More permanent also, as it prolongs the voice to the most distant ages; and gives us the means of recording our sentiments to futurity, and of perpetuating the instructive memory of past transactions. (Obs. 2. Art. 40.)

3. It likewise affords this advantage to such as read, above such as hear, that having the written characters before their eyes, they can arrest the sense of the writer; they can pause and resolve, and compare at their leisure, one passage with another; whereas the voice is fugitive in passing; you must catch the words the moment they are uttered, or you lose them for ever.

42. But although these be so great advantages of written language, that speech, without writing, would have been very inadequate for the instruction of mankind: yet we must not forget to observe, that spoken language has a great superiority over written language, in point of energy and force.

Illus. 1. The voice of the living speaker makes an impression on the mind, much stronger than can be made by the perusal of any writing. 2. The tones of the voice, the looks and gestures, which accompany discourse, and which no writing can convey, render speech, when it is ingeniously managed, infinitely more clear, and more expressive than

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Comparison of spoken with written Language.

the most accurate writing. For tones, looks, and gestures, are natural interpreters of the mind. They remove ambiguities-they enforce expressions-they operate on us by means of sympathy.

3. And sympathy is one of the most powerful instruments of persuasion. Our sympathy is always awakened more by hearing the speaker, than by reading his works in our closet.

Corpl. Hence, though writing may answer the purposes of mere instruction, as the symbolical language of Algebra does the mathematical science-all the great and high efforts of eloquence must be made by means of spoken, not of written, language:-and thus have we traced from their origin, through different stages of improvement, language and style as the foundation of eloquence.

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