INVENTION OF LETTERS. 389 made in various parts of the globe, at different times and under different circumstances, are the alphabets of our day. It is not without higher interest that these letters, farthest removed from the pictures of Egypt, have still returned once more to the nature of Hieroglyphics. We read without the aid of the ear, without the mediation of sound; and thus to all but unlettered people, who, from ignorance, and a few who from habit, read aloud, these letters have again become true signs or pictures of ideas. CHAPTER LIX. INVENTION OF LETTERS. The Ancients-Original Meaning of Letters-Universal Alphabet-Arrangement of Letters-Number of Letters-Names of Letters. THE invention of letters has, like all other useful and striking inventions, been ascribed to gods and demigods without number. It is justly considered one of the most sublime results of the activity of the human mind. Some ascribe this triumph to Adam or Seth, others to Memnon, the ancients to Mercury or Prometheus. These speculations are as unproductive as the many vague methods by which most learned men have endeavored to explain what they call the "original meaning" of letters. Supposing even that any substantial and permanent benefits could be obtained from such a knowledge, it would now avail but little. It is probable that they were, originally already, used unconsciously or accidentally; and if there was a correspondence between the sign and the idea, it was a very general and indefinite analogy only. The Greeks may have chosen, as Nodier thinks, the form of their έ from a saw, the noise of which it somewhat recalls; the to imitate an arrow, whizzing away from its bow; or the ℗ to represent to the eye the breast as its sound resembles that of a sucking child. The Latin B may have been meant to suggest the two lips, the O, a round, open mouth; the T a hammer, and the S or Z a serpent, as the enunciation recalls the sound of a stroke or the hiss of a serpent. The invention of letters belongs, like that of languages, to ante-historical times; and whatever may have been the original motive for choosing such letters, and no others, to represent certain ideas, that meaning has long since been lost. We know not the original meaning of words in modern languages; the Spaniard says, "el alferes," with two articles; the English speak of" quandary," and "kickshaw," for " qu'en dira," and "quelque-chose,” and the German forgets the sacred words, "Hoc est corpus (Christi)," in the slang term, "Hocus-pocus; " how then can the original meaning of letters be distinctly and consciously remembered after the lapse of thousands of years? As soon, finally, as these letters ceased to be either pictures or symbols, and were reduced to mere signs, their signification became also extinet; and to retrace it now might be diverting enough, and call into play all our ingenuity, but would hardly help the etymologist or the philologist to a better knowledge of language. Even the often-cherished plan of having one common alpha ARRANGEMENT OF LETTers. 391 bet for all the nations of the earth has not held out sufficient reward to engage the attention of more than one or two truly great men. Among these Leibnitz stands prominent. He ardently desired to obtain such a common series of letters, which, at least, the learned of all nations might understand. He felt himself, however, the force of the argument, that in writing, as in every art, variety is beauty, and, moreover, an evidence of truth as well as originality. Sensual objects may be capable of being always and every where represented by permanent signs. The Chinese accomplishes this to a certain extent; but our signs for spiritual things must necessarily change as our mind progresses, and our views are enlarged or corrected. Such an alphabet, read all over the world, exists in part already, in the signs for numbers, planets, metals, and similar substances. But experience has, even here, shown the necessity of change; and chemistry and mineralogy, for instance, have both introduced essential modifications in their letters or signs, as new views of the inner nature or outward relations of certain objects have required new expressions and new signs. If letters are considered a truly subline invention of man, the alphabet, or the arrangement of these signs and these names, are an evidence of most shameful negligence. Perfection can, of course, not be expected in a scheme which often, no doubt, owed its existence to accident, and has been subject to a thousand arbitrary and varied influences. The letters of the best developed language are still vague, equivocal, and insufficient. And yet Leibnitz already said: "Give me a good alphabet, and I will show you a good language; give me a good language, and I will show you high civilization." Not that a large number of letters is desirable; the number of letters, as little as that of corresponding sounds, is a sign of perfection, or even richness of language. On the contrary, here also perfection consists in employing the least means for the greatest end. An idiom is almost invariably rich in letters in proportion as it is barbarous. The mind of man has a tendency to master the outward element by which his thoughts are apt to be clogged and encumbered; he tries to retrench the over-luxuriant growth of sounds, and conveys the loftiest thought in the briefest word. now. For similar reasons it appears that the order in which letters are arranged among themselves, is arbitrary or accidental. Now and then, it is true, some principle may have been at work, indistinctly perhaps, but still perceptible even It is hardly probable that the curious but exact manner in which the five vowels are almost invariably distributed among the other letters should be the result of mere accident, whilst the letter A is found in all at the beginning, except the Æthiopian where it occupies the middle, and in Thibetan where it is in the last place. The Greeks, it is well known, ascribed to their A a peculiar degree of perfection—perhaps, however, only from the very fact that it stood first among the letters-and called Beta all that was not of the best quality, as the famous librarian Eratosthenes, who first designated himself apλó λoyos and whom they laughed at as nothing better than a Beta. The names of letters were, in the first instance, probably genuine names, not merely the sound they represented as at present, and taken from the object or the figure, from which they derived their form. The Egyptian A was called achan, CONSONANTS AND VOWELS. 393 an eagle, their C, Ca, a goat, whilst the Phoenician had their Aleph from their word for an ox, the Beth for horse, and Gimel for camel, because with them A, B, and G (our C) were at first rude pictures of these objects themselves, and from them obtained their name. It is surely a striking evidence of our own obligation to this primitive Oriental ingenuity, that wherever European languages are spoken on earth, there the Phoenician ox, and horse, and camel are found as a lasting memorial of most ancient times. CHAPTER LX. CONSONANTS AND VOWELS. Variety of sound and value-Division into sentences-Into words and syllables -Accents-Difference between written and spoken value-Arrangement of lines in writing. BOTH the number and the character of letters of letters vary, necessarily, in different languages. The Thibetan has 150, and marks with a different sign every combination of a vowel with consonants; in Japanese the letters are signs of syllables, in Chinese of words; the Oriental languages have marks for consonants only, those of the West for vowels also. This is the most important difference of alphabets. The East, moreover, has evidently the better part, for vowels are, in truth, inorganic and inarticulate. All nature produces vowels; the wind sighing in the branches of a forest, the so-called ol's harp, our |