Mexican picture-language and Peruvian knots might be produced in further proof of this conjecture, for I presume not to offer it as more than conjecture, that ancient hieroglyphics were not originally the adaptation of figures either to letters or words, but the representation solely of things which, by association, might be made mnemonical signs of any arbitrary collocation of words, generally expressing ideas of that class to which, by convention, the figures themselves belonged. I will offer only one test of an authentic verbal document, probably composed before the invention of alphabetical writing, by which this theory may be put to the proof.

In my last paper I alluded to the blessings of dying Jacob upon his children, and observed that the whole might be converted into a table of hieroglyphics, Every distinct benediction or prophecy, referring to each of his sons in succession, is marked by some strikingly appropriate figure; and, as the very struc ture of the sentences, even in our English translation, shows that the original composition was verse, and, consequently, a set form of words, the imagery of each clause would very naturally, and very obviously too, constitute the hieroglyphics of the particular sentiment associated with it, and not of that sentiment vaguely, but in the exact terms of the poetic diction in which it had been uttered. Take the blessing on Judah, quoted in our last paper: "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped

down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? - The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come: and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.-Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes: his eye shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk."

Here is an hieroglyphic table in three compartments in the first, under the figures of a lion's whelp, a full grown lion, and a lioness couched among her young, the power and fierceness of a mighty conqueror are shadowed forth; in the second appears a sceptre, the sign of sovereignty, to be continued till a greater than Judah shall come; in the third, the vintage-scene evidently exhibits the future prosperity and happiness of his descendants in the land promised to their fathers. Now, might not these symbols be engraven and kept in the families of the sons of Jacob, not merely in general remembrance of the blessings appropriated to each of their tribes, but to remind them and their posterity of the literal language in which the prophecies were given, and on the preservation of the words of which depended the only assurance that the substantial truth had not been perverted by loose oral tradition?

We are told that the Egyptian priests inscribed upon pillars, and obelisks, and on the walls of their temples, all the lessons of wisdom and records of past events, which they taught to the privileged few who were their scholars. If the speculations here advanced have their foundation in truth, it is probable that

whatever was thus taught by hieroglyphics was first composed in fixed forms of words; and that the mode of teaching from these was not by means of a key which unlocked the secrets of an universal language, but by repeating to the learners premeditated sentences like the Indian speeches, and associating with each of these, as it was impressed upon the memory, the figure or figures corresponding with it in the hieroglyphic series of the whole; then, though thousands might be well versed in the general signification of symbols which were in general use, none could understand any particular arrangement of them except those who were specially instructed in the same. Many might comprehend the scope of each of the blessings indicated in a hieroglyphic series made from Jacob's farewell words, but none, by any imaginable process, except previous instruction, could interpret the figures into the words.*

• The following is a very significant specimen of an Indian hieroglyphic still used: it has frequently been mentioned in ridicule, but it is not without a grave signification:

"A serpent in a circle, representing eternity. A tortoise resting on the serpent, being the symbol of strength, or the upholding power. - Four elephants standing on the back of the tortoise, emblems of Wisdom sustaining the earth. On the top of all the triangle, the symbol of Yoni, and the Creation."

In Oahu, one of the Sandwich Islands, the tax-gatherers, though they can neither read nor write, keep. very accurate accounts of all articles of all kinds, collected from the inhabitants throughout the island. This is done principally by one man, and the register is nothing more than a line of cordage from four to five hundred fathoms in length. Distinct portions of this rope are allotted to the various districts, which are known one from another by their relative locality in succession, beginning and ending at one point on the coast, and also by knots,

Ancient Greek Literature.

Leaving the interminable, perhaps we ought rather to say the inaccessible, maze of hieroglyphics, though "long detained in that obscure sojourn," we turn to the daylight scenes and pure realities of Greece. To arrive at these, however, we must pass over all the fables of her first ages, borrowed probably from Egyptian mythology, and introduced by Cecrops, the founder of Athens, and perhaps never understood by the Greeks: we must likewise leave behind the generation of heroes which followed that of gods, including among the former the earliest names in profane literature, Cadmus, who is said to have imported letters from Phoenicia; also the poets Orpheus, Musæus, Linus, Amphion, and others, of whom miracles of song are recorded, which may indeed be allegorical representations of the influence of the fine arts, especially poesy, (the language of superior beings to a barbarous people,) in civilising manners and transforming characters, by awakening, developing, and expanding the intellectual powers of man.

loops, and tufts of different shapes, sizes, and colours. Each tax-payer in each district has his place and designation in this string, and the number of dollars, pigs, dogs, pieces of sandalwood, the quantity of taro-root, and other commodities at which he is rated is exactly defined by marks most ingeniously diversified, which, though formed upon general principles, can only be understood in their application by the resident collector, who has in his mind the topographical picture of the island, and all its districts.

Homer himself lived so much within the undeterminable limit of that doubtful era, when, though it was no longer night, it was not yet day in Greece, that the only date which can be assigned to him is not that of his actual existence, but that of his resurrection from an obscurity which had gathered round his tomb, and would probably for ever have concealed it and all but his name from posterity. Of course the allusion is to that act of Pisistratus, by which he almost redeemed the royal title of tyrant from the obloquy which his usurpation had entailed upon it, when, according to the only history of the period - unwritten tradition, he collected the scattered songs of Homer, and united the loose links into that perfect and inimitable chain in which they have been delivered down to us, most resembling, it may be said, "the golden everlasting chain" celebrated in the Iliad, wherewith the father of the gods bound the earth to his throne; for, in like manner, hath this father of poets, from his "highest heaven of invention" indissolubly bound the world to the sovereignty of his genius.

Whether the poems of Homer, like the "Orlando Innamorato" of Boiardo, as recomposed by Berni, or our national ballad of "Chevy-Chase," as altered and improved by successive hands, were rude but noble lays, refined gradually or at once; or whether they were originally composed in the form which two thousand five hundred years have not been able to amend or deteriorate, this is a question which it were vain to argue upon here; suffice it to say, that Greek literature, in poetry at least, had reached a