AN 



ESSAY 



ON 



THE INVENTION 



OF 



ALPHABETIC WRITING. 



Read, May 8th, 1815. 



L HE difficulty of accounting for the invention of Alpha- 

 betic Writing, and the impossibihty of tracing any connexion 

 between letters, which are the representatives of sounds, 

 and hieroglyphics which are resemblances of things, has 

 induced men of extraordinary erudition and talents, to a&<- 

 cribe the gift to a direct revelation from heaven. And when 

 we consider the prodigious sagacity, the wonderful powers 

 of discrimination, the profundity of thought, and the almost 

 infinite comprehension requisite to analyse words into their 

 component parts — sounds appearing simple, into sounds 

 still more simple — to discover that the multitude of words 

 in a language are composed of a very small number of 

 sounds — to ascertain precisely this small number, and to 



VOL. XII. z 



