and progress of writing in detail, let us consider the manner in which the art may have originated in many different countries independently, at a certain period of their developing civilisation.

That the art of writing may have developed itself, as it was required, in countries totally distinct from each other, and without any intercommunication, appears beyond doubt. Thus, both in China and in Egypt we have pretty decisive evidence that the art was independently invented, though some have attempted to assert that the Chinese received the art from the Egyptians; and others, that the Egyptians received it from the Chinese, merely upon the ground of the similarity of the earliest iconographic characters of those nations. But there can be nothing extraordinary in the fact, that the figures of a horse or a goose, drawn by a primitive artist in Britain, in India, in China, or Egypt, should resemble each other; and no intimate connexion of the countries could be proved from that fact.

Writing is always found to be, in the first instance, a composition of iconographic signs; and does not interpret language, but paints objects and events. The first steps of the art of writing, therefore, when in the purely iconographic phase, might even be intelligible to distinct nations, having respectively arrived at a similar stage of the art, even when their spoken language was quite different; for objects and events, as expressed by signs and not by sounds, would probably appear the same to both.

It appears evident that the art of painting, that is, the idea of imitating the forms of plants, animals, or other objects, was, in the first instance, attempted for the purpose of expressing ideas, rather than producing mere pictorial representations; at all events, this view is known to form part of the earliest traditions of many different countries; the Egyptians, for example, having a legend that painting was invented by the gods, and revealed to man for the express purpose of writing the history of deities and kings.

The idea of imitating the form of an object was no doubt first suggested to man by means of its sun-shadow; and in one of the Greek traditions of the origin of painting, it is stated that the first picture was the outline of a horse's shadow, traced in the sand by his rider with the point of his spear. The minutest plant, and the most delicately formed animal, stand daily for their portraits to the sun; and their silhouettes appear so distinct on the grass or sand, that any uncultivated savage might take his first drawing-lesson by tracing the outline of their forms. So that photography, as it were, formed the basis of the earliest kind of art; as it forms, in our own day, in a more scientific sense, one of the most striking curiosities of art's latest developments.

The power being once acquired of delineating a plant or animal, the first step of picture-writing was attained, and it became easy to convey the idea of any simple object by its painted figure; but skilfully selected links of association were yet required to express more complex things, especially to do so in a striking and unmistakeable manner. Thus, the form and

colour of a house might be painted-but a city presented a much greater difficulty, which we may suppose overcome in the following manner. Most cities of primeval structure were, as a first precaution, enclosed within a square wall, or ditch, or other protection; we may thus imagine that a became in all cases the accepted sign, or rather symbol, of a town. This first step towards expressing the idea of a town by means of a sign, required, eventually, to be improved; for as towns increased in number, it became necessary to distinguish in writing one town from another: just as the Greeks of Aigina, who at first placed a simple A upon their coins, found it eventually necessary, as the number of states or cities which began with the same letter increased in number, to add other letters to the simple initial; and so on later coins of that state, first AI, and then AIG appear, as necessary additions and distinctions. Just so the first calligraphers, finding the □ signifying the town no longer sufficient, adopted a further mode of distinguishing it. Most cities in remote times received their names from some special circumstance relating to their foundation or locality, such as the vicinity of a dangerous animal, perhaps a lion, in which case it would be called by a name equivalent to "Liontown." As an example of the importance which was attached to circumstances connected with the vicinity of dangerous animals, when their races were more abundant and destructive, I may mention the case of the Greek city of Clazomene, in Asia Minor, the neighbourhood of which was infested by a wild boar of unusual size, whose depredations, and whose fleetness and cunning in escaping from all pursuit, gave rise to the fable of his possessing the power of actual flight; and on the early coins of this city a winged boar is the most conspicuous type, some of the coins bearing which, date five or six centuries prior to the Christian era.

In primeval writing, a town named after some analogous circumstance to the one above alluded to-Boartown, Snaketown, or Liontown-would be expressed, we may conceive, by the figure of a boar or snake placed within the conventional square; thus forming a combined sign, which must, with very little tuition, have easily indicated the particular town to the earliest readers of hieroglyphics. This second step in iconographic writing consisted in the conjunction of a symbolic with a merely iconographic sign; which is nearly the extent to which the Mexicans advanced in their rude art of writing, as that nation was surprised and destroyed by the invading Spaniards at this crisis of its progress in the art. But they had already attained also to the first elements of a phonetic character, which will be found described in the next chapter.

We are enabled to follow the next succeeding stages of the art in the old world. From the representation of mere absolute things or acts, to the representation of moral qualities, the chasm was immense; and yet its passage was effected. Such ideas as God-the soul-love-hate-seem incapable of being expressed in writing by an iconographic process; and yet their expression was accomplished by different nations, and, at different epochs, by signs peculiar to

each people, according to its conception of such abstract ideas. To explain the mode by which this addition to the powers of sign-writing was effected, let us only consider the word soul. With nations who considered that the principle of life was scated in the heart, it is easy to conceive that the figure of a heart would well represent the idea of the soul; while in other countries, with other creeds, the character or image would vary both in form and intricacy, according to influencing circumstances. But it may be seen by that single illustration how rapidly the capacity of writing, as a medium of expressing thought, must have expanded after the invention of the first symbolic signs of that description, which at once greatly enlarged the scope of expression, as they extended even to the notation of such abstract sentiments as justice, truth, &c. &c., to be alluded to hereafter in detail.

Another difficulty next arose, but not immediately, for we must allow long periods for the full development of each phase of this extraordinary art. The new impediment occurred when the increasing intercommunication of nations rendered it necessary to transcribe foreign names of persons and countries. The names of persons speaking a different language, and which names did not convey any meaning to the ears of the people whose progress we are watching, could not be represented by any of the iconographic or ideographic signs in use. Such names were, to the people we are speaking of, mere sounds, and could only be expressed phonetically, that is, by signs capable of expressing sound, which none of the previous iconographs or ideographs pretended to do; the new difficulty was, however, overcome, and the first attempt at expressing sound by a sign was effected by selecting signs representing things, the names of which, in the spoken language of the native people resembled the sound of the foreign name. Thus, though an image of a lion might represent, in iconographic writing, either a positive lion, or symbolically express strength, and though a figure of the sun might represent either the sun itself, or general light, yet, if the native names of those two things happened to resemble the foreign name they sought to express, they would use these iconographs combined, for the purpose of expressing that name; and, in order to denote their deviation from their ordinary use, they would place the figure of a man behind and before them, which served to signify their application to a proper name, and also to detach the new combination from the adjoining groups of true iconographs.

This was the first step towards a real alphabet of phonetic or sound-describing letters; for the use of those two characters were thenceforward confirmed as expressing, when required, particular sounds; and as they were gradually modified in form, to facilitate the act of writing them, they became eventually neither more nor less than actual letters, like our A, B, or C. Thus, the growth of an alphabet, simple and complete as ours now appears, was the slow result of successive ages of improvement, and of the succeeding efforts of nation after nation, during a long series of generations.