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Poplinski. Polish Grammar. Lissa, 1840.

Bandtkie. Polish Dictionary, revised by Dobrovsky. Breslau,

1824.

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Germanic. Jacob Grimm. Deutsche Grammatik. Göttingen,

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Hahn. Auswahl aus Ulfilas mit Wörterbuch und Grammatik. Heidelberg, 1849.

Rask. Icelandic Grammar, translated by Thorpe. Copenhagen,

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Dasent. Old Norse Grammar (Rask's). Frankfurt, 1843. (English Grammars of the Swedish, Danish, &c., are familiarly known.) We add:

Hanson. Tysk. Norsk Haand Ordbog. Christiania, 1840. Schram. Principes de la langue Danoise et Norvégienne. Copenhagen, 1839.

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Copenhagen, 1825. German;

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Berlin, 1839. Owen. A Welsh Grammar and Dictionary. London. O'Donovan. Grammar of the Irish Language. Dublin, 1845 Kelly. A Grammar of the ancient Gaelic. Essex, 1806. Cregeen. A Dictionary of the Manks Language. Douglass, 1835.

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Dictionary of the Cant Language, an appendix to the life of "The English Rogue." London, 1689.

A BRIEF SKETCH

OF THE

ART OF WRITING.

17*

INTRODUCTION.

THE history of written language, as far as its outward form is concerned, is not unlike that of spoken language: it proceeds, like the latter, from the most complicated to the most simple. Gigantic monuments, and the labor of millions, were once employed to convey what is now sent from continent to continent with the rapidity of lightning, in a few insignificant lines.

As long as the human family was one and dwelt together in the same happy place, the word alone was, of course, sufficient; oral tradition, the poetic mother of history, perpetuated all that was necessary. But when death made man final in time, and the curse of Babel parted brother from brother, they became aware of the necessity of perpetuating the memory of great events for future generations, and new races, that were to come after them, as well as for the distant nations who, they wished, might hear of their glory and feel with and for them.

It was then that whole nations undertook gigantic paintings on the rocks of the earth, or the erection of colossal monuments to leave a mark of their greatness behind them. Then the Pillars of Hercules became an eloquent record, where Nature herself proclaimed her "ne plus ultra!" and the mysterious architecture of the so-called Cyclops became in their

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