at noon, and at midnight, with paleness on his brow, and tremor in his step, went thither to celebrate the horrible mysteries in honour of that terrific deity whose aspect he yet dreaded more than death to behold.

"The British Druids, however, seem to have exceeded, if possible, even their Asiatic ancestors, in savage ferocity of soul and boundless lust of sacrificial blood. The pen of history trembles to relate the baleful orgies which their frantic superstition celebrated, when inclosing men, women, and children, in one vast wicker image, in the form of a man; and, filling it with every kind of combustibles, they set fire to the huge colossus. While the dreadful holocaust was offering to their sanguinary gods, the groans and shrieks of the consuming victims were drowned amidst shouts of barbarous triumph, and the air was rent, as in the Syrian temple of old, with the wild dissonance of martial music! However incredible the conjecture, it is not without reason suspected that they sometimes proceeded to even more criminal lengths, and finished their horrid sacrifice with a still more horrid banquet. Religion shudders at such a perversion of its name and rites; and humanity turns with horror from the guilty scene*!"

STRICTURES ON THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING.

The hieroglyphic figures, mentioned in a preceding page, as delineated in colours on the bricks that formed the walls of the palace of Babylon, may be justly called a species of writing, the species earliest employed by mankind, which was symbolical - and in the pictorial style, like that of the Mexicans and is at present in general use

* Ind. Antiq. vol. vi. p. 105, et seq.

among the nations of the earth least civilized. It was probably so at an early period, too, even among the polished people of Greece, since the word ypaqw signifies both to delineate and to write. Admitting the book of Job to be of the early age generally assigned to it by Christian commentators, and the composition of the Hebrew legislator, it bears most decided attestation to the early progress of writing, and the mode of it, in the following passage. "Oh! that my words were Now WRITTEN! Oh! that they were printed in a BOOK! That they were GRAVEN WITH AN IRON PEN AND LEAD, in the rock for ever!" Job xix. 23, 24. This mode of writing on sheets of metal, lead, brass, or copper, with an iron pen, succeeded to the primitive and more difficult mode of delineating on brick and marble. They were less perishable in their nature, and it will be recollected that to plates of brass and copper*, of late years dug up in India, but of far inferior antiquity to the work just mentioned, we are indebted for nearly all the authentic documents we possess of the most ancient history of that country. It is well known to the classical student that, in after ages, both Greeks and Romans for this purpose made use of tables of metal or ivory, overlaid with wax, tabellæ cerata, upon which they wrote, or rather engraved, their sentiments with a stylus of the same materials.

Semiramis is said by Diodorus to have received epistolary communications from a king of India, and to have caused an inscription to be cut in Syriac characters upon mount Bagisthan. In Egypt, also, letters are said to have been invented and taught by the elder Hermes; but every thing concerning that character, and the period in

* See those plates respectively engraved in the various volumes of the Asiatic Researches. + Diod. Sic. lib. ii. p. 127.

which he flourished, is so wrapt in mysterious obscurity, that no dependance can be placed upon the assertion. In respect to those fanciful theorists who will have him to be the same with Joseph, or Moses, they do little better than make those venerable and pious patriarchs the abettors of the grossest idolatry, since, according to Clemens, the sepoyλupa ypaμpata, or hieroglyphic letters, were only the images of beasts, the objects of the senseless adoration of the Egyptians; and the Iεgα yраμμатα were nothing more or less than the contractions of those hieroglyphics.

Alphabetic writing, if in any form it existed at that early period, was certainly not in common use in that country, and, in fact, seems not to have been employed, by any documents that have descended to us, either in state affairs, in the way of covenant in the disposal of landed property, in the concerns of merchandize, or in private transactions that would naturally call forth the frequent exercise of an art so useful in the concerns of social life. When Joseph, in his exalted station of minister to Pharoah, discovered himself to his brethren, and sent them back to his father, he gave them no written documents for him, but a verbal message, which he charged them faithfully to deliver. Upon so interesting an occasion, and with his boundless filial attachment to an aged and venerated parent, if any other than hieroglyphic characters had existed at that time in Egypt, it is natural to conjecture that he would have used them. Nor can it be supposed, that, had the Egyptians of that period once been acquainted with alphabetic writing, the knowledge of so useful an art could have been easily lost among a race in all other respects so learned. Mr. Bryant has urged this argument so strongly in the second volume of his Analysis, that I hope the reader will excuse my presenting him with a short extract from that volume.

"If the people of the first ages had been possessed of so valuable a secret, as that of writing, they would never have afterwards des

cended to means less perfect for the explanation of their ideas. And it is to be observed, that the invention of hieroglyphics was certainly a discovery of the Chaldæans; and made use of in the first ages by the Egyptians; the very nations who are supposed to have been possessed of the superior and more perfect art. They might retain the former, when they became possessed of the latter; because their antient records were entrusted to hieroglyphics: but, had they been possessed of letters originally, they would never have deviated into the use of symbols; at least, for things which were to be published to the world, and commemorated for ages. Of their hieroglyphics we have samples without end in Egypt; both on obelisks, and in their syringes; as also upon their portals, and other buildings. Every mummy almost abounds with them. How comes it, if they had writing so early, that scarcely one specimen is handed down to us; but that every example should be in the least perfect character? For my part, I believe that there was no writing (he means alphabetic writing) antecedent to the law at mount Sinai. Here the divine art was promulgated; of which other nations partook; the Tyrians and Sidonians first, as they were the nearest to the fountain-head. And when this discovery became more known; even then, I imagine, that its progress was very slow; that in many countries, whither it was carried, it was but partially received, and made use of to no other purpose of consequence. The Romans carried their pretensions to letters pretty high; and the Helladian Greeks still higher; yet the former marked their years by a nail driven into a post; and the latter for some ages simply wrote down the names of the Olympic victors from Coræbus; and registered the priestesses of Argos*."

We read indeed of signets, with their inscriptions, at this early

period; for Pharoah put his signet on the hand of Joseph, but the characters inscribed upon them were probably for the most part of an hieroglyphic and symbolical cast, like those precious stones engraved with the figures of scarabæi, sphinxes, ibis's, serpents, &c. that have reached the present time, and are the delight of the existing race of mythologists.

When Laban and Jacob made their well-known covenant at Mizpah, on the piled heap of monumental stones, we read, indeed, of a pillar set up, but of no inscription upon it, Gen. xxxi. 49. When Joshua erected a similar memorial column of twelve stones at Gilgal, on purpose to record the miracle of Jordan passed through by the Israelites, dry shod, we read of no inscription upon that column, although it was intended to inform remotest posterity of the awful fact; Josh. v. 22. On the monuments recorded by Homer to have been erected by the ancient Greeks over their valiant heroes slain in battle, we find no inscription engraved; a column, or some other characteristic mark of distinction, is alone mentioned. Neither does that venerable bard, who flourished between eight and nine hundred years before Christ, mention any correspondence carried on by letter, or order given in writing, except in one solitary and very doubtful instance. It occurs in the sixth book of the Iliad, where Bellerophon is said to have carried a letter from Prætus, King of the Argives, to Jobates, his father-in-law, containing an order for the death of that prince. It is a point, however, extremely disputable, whether any kind of alphabetical writing was used in that letter, as it is called, for in the text of Homer is only to be found the vague word snara, signifying literally marks or signs, an expression consequently far more applicable to hieroglyphic, than alphabetic, delineation*. Let it also be remem

* Iliad, lib. vi. ver. 168.