68 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



which I have just adverted. In the mean time I hope enough has been here 

 stated to justify my availing myself of the disclosure, so far as to apply it to an 

 object of a merely literary nature, though one of some interest ; namely, the 

 determination of the origin of the graphic system of the Brahmans. 



Although alphabetic writing is, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to prove, of 

 divine origin, yet the miracle employed to convey an apprehension of its nature 

 and use to the human mind was not extended beyond what was necessary for the 

 purpose. Accordingly in the first writing of this kind all the characters were 

 originally used with syllabic powers ; and as man was capable of rising by natural 

 means from a syllabary to a superior alphabet, so he was left to his own exertions 

 to accomplish this object. The great step necessary to his ascent depended on 

 his discovering that the vowel parts of syllables admitted of but few varieties ; on 

 his disengaging those parts from the whole syllables ; and on his classifying them 

 and representing them by signs. Before the Greek transmuted the gutturals of 

 the old Phoenician alphabet (most of which were of no service to him in their 

 original use) into vowel-letters, he must have gone through some process of this 

 kind in his thoughts ; and to his genius and sagacity is due the beautiful inven- 

 tion which has given such an immense superiority to the alphabetic writing of 

 Europe over that of Asia. As long as Hebrew continued a living language the 

 syllabic signs answered every requisite purpose ; but when it went quite out of 

 familiar use, the ruder method of designation was no longer sufficient for pre- 

 serving the sacred text. Before this was actually the case, and as soon as ever 

 the necessity for an alteration arose, we find matters so arranged that the Bible 

 was translated into Greek, and that a very important improvement was intro- 

 duced into Hebrew writing itself. The national prejudices of the Jews, and their 

 backwardness in literary acquirements, would lead one to suppose they would be 

 the very last people to avail themselves of the improvement in question, yet 

 they appear to have been the first. They certainly took this improvement 

 immediately from the Greek writing, and it is common to them with all the 

 Shemitic nations of Asia;* but so very peculiar a mode of vocalization, — whereby 



* It is, I believe, chiefly owing to the circumstance of all those nations having adopted the same 

 method of vocalization, that it has been assumed to be an essential part of the writing employed by 

 each of them, and that its adventitious nature has been so long concealed. But if once attention be 

 turned to the various proportions in which the letters applied to the use of this method are inserted 



