probable, moreover, that the Greeks either borrowed a simpler alphabet of the Phoenicians or dropped some sounds not suitable for their language or pleasant to their fastidious ear. Whilst the Shemitic alphabet counted 22 letters and no vowels, the oldest Greek of 16 letters has already vowels: they must, therefore, have changed certain consonants into vowels and added to these the spiritus lenis of the Hebrew and Arabic. The last five letters of the Greek alphabet, alone, were original, but the exact period of their introduction is still obscure and uncertain. The series was complete at the time of the Persian war; it seems to have been first used in Ionia, and in the year 402 (Olymp. 94, archon Euclides) in Athens; a few Shemitic signs remained, even then, as numbers, especially the so-called digamma, the Latin f, with the value of six, the "Koppa," between ☛ and p, like the. Latin q (qo) and the "sampi" at the end of the alphabet, representing nine hundred.

The Greeks wrote originally in a greater variety of ways than other nations; inscriptions are known, in which the words are arranged in columns, ταποικον οι μοναιδον; others where they go from east to west, or from north to south, and back again, ẞovσrpóþηdov; sometimes they are circular, σpapadov, and in a few instances cuneiform. Afterwards they preferred, like all Eastern nations, the direction from right to left, though it is said that there exist as old inscriptions, written from left to right, a form which was generally adopted since the Persian war. Even in the rudest and most ancient inscriptions, however, the vowels are already written.

The conviction that the Romans, so far from owing every thing to the Greeks, were even their seniors, has gained no

little additional weight from recent discoveries of most ancient Roman writings. Two circumstances, however, prevented the Romans from leaving behind them many such traces. For ages, their tendency and occupation were such that but little was written; Livy (D. I., lib. vII. 2.) and Cicero (Att. 15) tell us both, that for many a generation a nail was driven into the gates of the sacred temple to mark the lapse of a year! Besides, it is well known that the Romans were at first constantly in intercourse, if not united, with the Umbrians and Oscans, whose language and letters were closely allied to their own; the Etruscans, also, were probably equally near, and this very relationship prevented, for a long time, the formation of one great, national tongue. This is the opinion of Niebuhr (I. 123). Müller and Lepsius think that Roman letters were not used before the year 300 a, urbis; but there are older inscriptions existing as, e. g., those in the temple of Diana on the Aventinus, the Laws on the "stela" of Servius Tullius, which Dionysius Halicarnassus saw (vI. 26), the famous treaty between Spurius Cassius and the Latini, and the "Aes" tablets in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the first commercial treaty between Rome and Carthage, 275 a. urbis, seen by Polybius and written in an idiom which even contemporaries understood but in part. Most of these writings, it is true, are almost identic with the most ancient Greek characters, and still bear an equally striking resemblance to old Etruscan writing.

The oldest forms of genuine Latin letters are probably found on the stones of Pesaro; though they are not, in themselves, the oldest inscriptions; these letters are all angular, and the later, for instance, still consists of five distinct signs IVV,

the E is simply II, and F. The most ancient inscriptions in these letters are considered those on the tombs of Scipio Barbatus and his sister, and of Paulla Cornelia, together with a few coins of doubtful antiquity, none of which show, as yet, the substitution of G for C, which still prevailed in 300 a. urbis. Besides these truly Latin writings, there exist inscriptions in Oscan and Umbrian, intelligible to our readers, of which the Oscan shows the greatest resemblance to Greek, the Umbrian to Roman. The Etruscan differed from both, and had, e. g., no media, no b, d, and g. No Latin MS. is known older than the first century after Christ.

The opinion of Pliny that the Roman alphabet was imported into Latium by the Pelasgi, is not supported by history. The Romans had another legend which stated that the Arcadian fugitive, Evander, who was of Pelasgic origin, brought letters to the Aborigines of Italy, and that his mother, Carmenta, who presided over the "sacred hymns," changed Greek into Latin letters. (Hygin. Tab. 277.)

The origin of Roman writing must, therefore, be sought for in the Etruscan-Greek; some authors believing that the Etruscan letters were modified by the agency of Modern Greeks, who resided in Italy, and used a more recent form of Greek letters. Others are disposed, for good reasons, to consider the old Roman writing, Doric proper. Thus the Etruscan g had the power of k; hence the Romans used c instead of both c and k, and wrote 66 macestratos, carthacinienses (Gesenius, 73), and only as late as the sixth century, a slight modification of c was introduced, and gradually assumed the form and power of the modern g. The Romans knew also the

digamma, which the Greeks had already lost, and thus furnished an additional proof that their mode of writing was of older date than the contemporary alphabet of the Greeks Subsequently the Roman letters underwent repeated and important changes. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. II. 37) and Quinctilian (I. O. 1. 4. 9.) both speak of their alphabet as containing only twenty-one letters, and ending with the letter x, "ultima nostrarum;" which Priscian calls "duplicem," and fancies to have been adopted from a later invention in Greece. Quite recent researches and discoveries of unknown inscriptions, led Morumsen to believe the alphabet, as at present known, to be identic with the very oldest. Its arrangement is ascribed to a freedman, Carvilius Ruga, of the year 523, who opened the first grammar-school-properlyypaμμatodidaσkaλeîov-in Rome.

The ancient Roman was written "dendrorsum," and consisted of simple straight lines, placed side by side, or at right angles to each other. Afterwards certain changes took place in form and sound; the angles were rounded off; but for centuries after Christ, none but capitals were employed, and without a division in words. Before the eighth century no punctuation appears, nor any abbreviation; both did not become general until the fourteenth century. The so-called Uncials were originally about an inch high, and afterwards nothing more than a reduced, rounded-off, Roman alphabet, used in MSS. for initials and the signature. Uncials of a smaller size were called minutae or minusculae, to distinguish them from the majusculae, and differed not so much in size, as in the fact that they were joined to each other, which was never the case with the former. It is this later Roman alphabet which has

afterwards been transferred to the Romance languages, and is now used by all civilized nations, except the Greeks, Turks, and Russians. The Germanic races, also, employed it long, as they had learned it from their apostles. During the middle ages, there came into use an angular mode of writing, Black Letter, which is erroneously called Gothic; it consisted of purposely sharp and angular minuscula, and was extensively used for the first printed books. Most beautiful in missals and public documents, it is still used for ornamental, antique-looking works, but superseded in German tongues by the modern German letters, and in other idioms by the "cursive" writing, also called "Aldine," from its introduction through Aldus Manutius, of Venice, who first used it in 1501, in some beautiful publications of valuable authors.

CHAPTER LXVI.

GERMAN WRITING.

Gothic Letters-Ulfilas-Albrecht Durer.

THE Gothic letters, of vital importance to the first Christians of our race, owe their origin to the noble efforts of Bishop Ulfilas, who in the year 376, obtained permission from the emperor Valens, for the hard-pressed Visigoths to cross the Danube and to occupy Moesia. These Moesogoths became his "beloved children on earth;" to them he preached the "Gospel of his