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

terials of Writi

ime. From one point, however,-this side of the gulf of lost ages, in which high art

] A learned writer says:-"In Genesis v. 1, 'This is the book of the generations of Adam,' reference is made to the book of genealogy; whence it irresistibly follows that writing must have been in use among the antediluvian patriarchs; and, under the view that writing was a divine revelation, the same almighty power that, according to the preceding proposition, instructed Moses, could have equally vouchsafed a similar inspiration to any patriarch from Adam to Noah. Nor does it seem consistent with the merciful dispensati

mbodied in the Pentateuch, bear the appearance of documents copied from written archives. We have the authority of Genesis v. 1 for asserting the existence of a book of genealogies in the time of Noah; and a city mentioned by Joshua was named in Hebrew "Kirjath Sefer," "The City of Letters." It is impossible to prove that le

being more convenient. Such was the writing-table which Zacharias used. [Luke i. 63.] Cedar was preferred as being more incorruptible; from this custom arose the celebrated saying of the ancients, when they meant to give the highest eulogium of an excellent work, et cedro digna locuti,-that it was worthy to be written on cedar. These tablets were made of the trunks of trees. The same reason which led them to prefer the cedar to other trees, induced them to write on wax, which is incorruptible. Men used it to write their testaments, in order better to preserve them. Thus, Juvenal says, cereus i

uth of the brooks, ... shall wither, be d

ing of the p

itie also of men after death consisteth especially in paper which is made thereof. M. Varro writeth that the first invention of making paper was devised upon the conquest

skin of a tree was called liber,-from whence the Latin word, liber, a book; and we have derived

E

, or some other hard substance, called by the Romans a style: hence a man's manner of composition was figuratively

Latin, as also from a Greek word,

eral custom at first. Pens made of quills were not in use until the fifth century. The oldest certain account of writing with quills is a passage of Isidore, who died in 636, and who,

g as giving a poetica

and pray'd ol

d Psyche to

s wings: Tim

cuffle dropp

he prize, and

k'd to trim

hough 'tis

all make us h

ot fear to

s useful lo

he only p

r pace for ab

NC

employed for the purpose of drawing in the fifteenth century. In 1565, an old author notes that people had pencils for writing which consisted of a wooden handle, in which was a piece of

SC

ifies a notary, or, in a large sense, any one employed to draw up deeds and writings. 2. This name signifies

has the same meaning as "schrabben" (Dutch), to scrape or d

d man; and, as the chief part of learning among the Jews was concerned with the sacred books of Scripture, the word signified especially one "who was skilled in the law of God"-on

ess of the scribes was to make duplicate copies of these books, which, when completed, the leaves were pinned together so as to make a single long sheet. This wa

in rollin

o the sanhedrim, or chief council, and are therefore frequently mentioned in the New Testament with the elde

ENT

ed in art a "body color," or a more solid medium than is at pr

ory, and soot from furnaces and baths, according to Pliny

t the ink then made was much more opaque, as well as encaustic, than what is used at present. Inks red, purple, and blue, and also gold and silver inks were much used; the red was made from vermilion, cinnabar, and carmine; the purple from the murex, one sort of which, named the purple encaustic, was set apart for the sole

-HO

f lead, sometimes of silver, and we

YPHICAL

records prove to have been in use at an epoch close up to the Septuagint era of the Flood." From Egyptian annals we may glean some faint confirmation of the view that they either possessed the primeval alphabe

rst Hermes, the Egyptians ascr

ting a word or letter. Drawing, therefore, was the most natural medium; and the study

the Comte de Caylus to be formed, as stated above, of hieroglyphical marks, adopted with no great variations

the text, but from one in Porphyry, which may be found in Warburton. 3. It was, however, considered as perfectly distinct from the genuine hieroglyphic, which was always understood to denote things, either by mere picture-writing, or, more commonly, by very refined allegory. 4. Works of a popular and civil nature were written in this character, as we learn from Clement of Alexandria; whereas the genuine hieroglyphic was exceedingly secret and mysterious, and the knowledge of it confined to the priesthood. 5. The inscription upon the Rosetta stone is said, in the terms of the decree contained in it, to be written in the sacred, national, and Greek characters. 6. It could not be a mysterious ch

in our conjectures, the value of the Rosetta stone is incomparably greater than has been imagined. We have no need of hieroglyphics: Roman and Egyptian monuments are full of them. But a primitive alphabet, probably the earliest ever formed in the world, and illustrating an important link in the history of writing,-the adaptation of signs to words,-is certainly a discovery very interesting to any philosophical min

ng-lost meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphics-"was immediately," says Gliddon, in his Lectures on Ancient Egypt, "perceived by the learned, who in vain endeavored to trace the analogy between symbolical and alphabetical writing. Its arrival in

ymbolical writing of our North American Indians, specimens of which are in the museum at Washington City. A war despatch, gi

supposition that the Indians of North America are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Nor is it alone the mere words which these signs

lated by Father Charlevoix, the French historian, that the Hurons and Iroquois in their early day had a tradition among them that the first woman came from heaven and had twins, and that the elder killed the younger. In 1641 an old Indian woman stated that this tradition

arkable, resemblance between the language of the Creek Indians with that of the ancient Hebrew; for instance: "Y He Howa" means Jehovah; "Halleluwah," hallelujah; "Abba," in Creek, has the same meaning as "Abba" in Hebrew; "K

s to trace, as it were, a distinct line from that most ancient school of designing figures to suit expression and language, down to these tribes, who may wel

peror Charles V. by Ferdinand Cortez. These hieroglyphics are now as little understood as are those of Egypt, although both are now gradually y

m 1797, when the learned Dane, George Zoega, published at Rome his folio "De Ori

ONGUES-THE CONFOUN

he people is one, and they have all one language. Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand o

like a flash of lightning, was, that the people became as strangers to each other, and spoke a language wild and chao

ters could not reach it. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon. From this date may be ascribed the history of languages. It is supposed, however, that Noah and other pious persons, chiefly the descendants of Shem in the line of Eber, not being concerned in this project, ret

ing their original language back to its former use, they invented new languages, new phrases; and thus in time every great nation had its own language. The dividing of languages was therefore the dividing of nations. The precise

Tower of Babel; nor is one of its builders' names mentioned

dolatry, and the type of the "mystical Babylon," t

three hundred and fifty feet high, built of brick and containing twenty-five gates of solid brass and

Belus, so minutely described by Herodotus. The base of this tower measures two thousand and eighty-two feet in circumference. Babylo