and eminent personages, were perpetuated in families through all generations, from Adam downward; but, as it was enough for the purposes of tradition, that events and discourses should be substantially true, every one who repeated either would do so in his own. language, rudely or eloquently, according to his taste or talent. Indeed, to sum up in a few sentences what had been delivered in a long dialogue, it was so far from being necessary, that it was obviously impossible to use the actual words of the speakers, even if they had been remembered.

In one instance, however, without violating probability, an exception may be made in favour of the speech of Judah to Joseph, when he and his brethren had been brought back to Egypt by the stratagem of putting the silver cup into Benjamin's sack. This address is perhaps the finest piece of pleading ever reported, though nothing can be more simple and inartificial than the diction and arrangement of the whole. In truth, it is little else than a family history, with the principal incidents of which Joseph himself was well acquainted, and in the most afflictive of which he had borne his bitter part. There is, moreover, a dramatic interest in the scene, arising from the reader's being in the secret of Joseph's consciousness; and thence knowing that the force of every fact and argument was far more searching and heartmelting to the hearer, than the speaker himself could imagine, from his ignorance of the person whom he was addressing. I must not quote more than one paragraph, referring to a conversation between them

and labours at home."-Each of these conditions of the covenant was confirmed by the delivery of a belt of wampum, significant of its particular provisions. For many years afterwards these were faithfully kept in the national chest, and from time to time brought out, when the identical speeches delivered with them were repeated in the ears of the people.

To return to the original use of hieroglyphics among the ancients, for this mode of registering thoughts was not confined to the Egyptians, I do humbly conceive that it was precisely the same in principle, though far more comprehensive than the use of the wampum symbols among the Red Indians,—namely, that it was a system of mnemonics, not fixed but optional, and capable of indefinite application. It is generally presumed that each figure had a meaning so determined, that those who were possessed of the key, might unlock the mystery of every combination on systematic principles that could be presented to him. Whether this process were slow or prompt, difficult or easy, is not the question: the practicability of it may reasonably be doubted on this plain ground, - the symbols which compose hieroglyphics are so few, that, in the very nature of things, the ideas which they could clearly express must be few in proportion: and though their combinations might be as infinitely diversified as the combinations of alphabetical signs, yet, as each could have but one fixed meaning, which it would always express, the range of ideas in which it might be introduced must be exceedingly narrow, and nearly all of the same class.

discourses were probably so delivered to the tribes bodily assembled from time to time, to receive instruction from the lips of a legislator, who could call the heavens and the earth to be his auditors, and say with authority, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass."

Joshua's exhortation to the elders before his death; Samuel's remonstrance with the Israelites for their perverseness in demanding a king; Solomon's speech to the people before the dedication of the temple; Daniel's confession of the sins of the captives in Babylon, and their forefathers; Ezra's prayer after the return of the Jews to their own land, laid desolate; and, in the New Testament, Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost; Stephen's discourse before the Sanhedrim; and Paul's two defences before the council, and before Agrippa:-These are all of the same class of oratory, in which the details are long, the arguments brief, and the conclusion personal; so that this peculiar mode of eloquence may be traced for two thousand years; and probably, from its plainness and energy of application, was usual among all the eastern people.

But whatever may be conjectured concerning artificial prose before the invention of writing, it is certain that verse existed from the infancy of the world, and was employed for history, laws, chronology, devotion, oracles, love, war, fables, proverbs, and prophecy, indeed, for every combination of thoughts, which were > intended to be long and well remembered.

Invention of Letters.

Having now arrived at that period, where sacred and profane history meet, the former, like a clear stream issuing from a known fountain, and defined along its whole course through a peopled and cultivated region; the latter, dimly and slowly disentangling its mazes from the shades of impenetrable forests,

"Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,”

BYRON.

but henceforward widening, deepening, brightening. on its way, the first subject that claims our attention is the learning of the Egyptians, of which much has been said and little is known. The testimony, however, of all antiquity, as well as the superb and stupendous monuments of architecture, and traces of literature in the shape of hieroglyphics and symbols, however unintelligible, prove that they were a wonderful people for gigantic enterprise and indefatigable industry, in achieving what were then the highest feats of manual, intellectual, and mechanic power. On these we shall not expatiate here, as another opportunity will be afforded in the next paper of this series, of considering by whom, and by what means, such marvellous works were executed. At present we shall only allude to them generally, in connection with the discovery of alphabetical writing. When, where, and by whom, letters were invented, it is now in vain to imagine. Notwithstanding the pretensions of Hermes Trismegistos, Memnon, Cadmus, and

others, the true history, nay even the personal existence of these supposed claimants, must be ascertained before the unappropriated honour can be conceded to any one of them. It may, meanwhile, be affirmed, as one of those circumstances humbling to human pride that occasionally occur in history, and which, while they strangely stir the imagination, awaken sublime but melancholy reflection in minds given to muse upon the vanity and mortality of all the things that are done under the sun,-it may be affirmed, as one of these humbling circumstances, that the man who conquered the greatest trophy ever won from fate and oblivion, lost his own name, after divulging the secret by which others might immortalise theirs. As a figure of speech, one may be allowed to wish that the first letters in which he wrote that name, whether with a pen of iron on granite, or with his finger in sand, had remained indelible. But his own invention is his monument, which, like the undated and uninscribed pyramid, will remain a wonder and a riddle to the end of the world.

It is allowed, I believe, on all hands, that the Egyptians, from time whereof the memory of man knoweth not to the contrary, possessed three kinds of writing, hieroglyphical, alphabetical, and, probably, as a link between, logographic, of which latter the Chinese is the only surviving example at this day. Indeed, in all countries where society has emerged from the stagnation of barbarism, and has made but little advance towards civilisation, there have been found evidences of attempts to create a language for the eye, either by figures of things, by arbitrary