Foot-prints of a letter carrier; or, a history of the world's correspondece

Sub So

sun." "There is no new thing,"

paintings, their mechanics, their arts, and sciences: these are the evidences to prove how far they had advanced in knowledge before the world's revolutions cast them back again to ignorance and gloom. With the downfall of cities-crumbling away under the fiat of the Almighty, or swallowed up by earthquakes-went the genius of ages; an

ay we exclaim

new thing u

nt Egypt," speaking of the state of the arts i

rchipelago with their forts and temples,-long before Etruscan civilization had smiled on Italian skies? And shall not the ethnographer, versed in Egyptian lore, procl

a copper sword; of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished sienite 900 tons in weight for any distance by land and water; of building arches, round and pointed, with masonic precision unsurpassed

ife of old as is considered the best form now, a weaver throwing the same hand-shuttle, a whitesmith using that identical form of blowpipe but lately recognized to be the most efficient, the seal-engraver cutting in hierog

se inventions which a ruder state of society devised. And yet even here we actually owe to those ages much of the material which makes up our great postal superstructure. We learned from them how mess

ORAL

ty origin and ultimate exalted destiny has ever been accomplished but by toil; by diligent and well-di

was not the mere flash of the brightness of heaven over the e

fe from this holy and divine light. And when man in the image of his Maker stood in the Garden of

overnment. Deity planned it, and, as th

ver the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and

uisite to sustain life by labor or otherwise; and these brought forth the mind's

ded in itself the means of providing for the wants of man. Thi

fficient to maintain them. Hence they were obliged to have recourse to other means. Property being established and ascertained, men began to exchange one rude commodity for another. While their wants and desires were confined within narrow bounds, they had no other idea of traffic but that of simple barter. The husbandman exchanged a part of his harvest for the cattle of the shepherd;

great: greatness led to power,-power to rule and govern. The combining of all these elementary steps led to the creation of kings, emperors, and lords. Then followed

tified with the welfare, the interest, and honor of a nation, as well as of mankind, they will not

GUA

of communicating their thoughts to one another. Destitute of this power, reason would be a solitary and, in some measure, an unavoidable principle. Speech is the great instrument by

ays:-"The first aim of language was to communicate

one tongue and one langua

of nature speaking through things animate, giving form and harmony to objects anima

wild ?olian sounds to each other. And there was language in waterfalls, mountain cataracts, as well as music in the sound, though expressed in thundertones; and, as the spirit of Deity p

t was a divine institution, and only reached its present st

and poets believed that men wer

et turp

, "Ha, he, hi, ho," by which, like beasts, they expressed certain emotions. Others, again, assert that the early races were in all things rude and savage, totally ignorant of the arts, unable to

e manner of beasts, and supported themselves by eating the food of b

iety. He does not, however, seek to explain how language arose, being disheartened at the outset by the difficulty of

invention would not have been at once matured, but must have been the result of the necessities and experience of successive generations. Adam

he Hebrew? It is the language of Deity, and it pleased our Lo

n use in the world, of which 937 are Asiatic, 588 Europe

re about 20,000 words in the Spanish, 22,000 in the English, 38,000 in the Latin, 30,0

, except the preterites and participles of verbs; to which must be added some few terms which, though set down in the dictionaries, are

French, 23; Italian, 20; Spanish, 27; German, 26; Sclavonic, 27; Russian, 41; Latin, 22;

7) thus characteriz

Hebrew, clad

reek, rich in

ovely marriage

wise; the Ara

oquent; the

anish, and the

en

n, since Tyre, Sidon, &c. were distinguished cities in the ag

Hindoo learning, and said

he Euphrates, and is not now in use. The modern Arabic was inven

or, Syria, Tartary, &c. It approaches

ibed to Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,

alled from Coptos in Egypt,-a

, is derived from the S

sed in Italy, and so called from the

racters under this name are

t into B?otia, where he settled in B.C. 1500; though Diod

asi Pelagi, because they traversed the ocea

acter, otherwise the Samaritan,-which is generally supposed to be tha

e Sanscrit is call

modern; Rabbinical; Samaritan, ancient and modern;

phabet is th