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



conception of consonantal powers except through such a medium, — a point which 

 has been fully explained in my publication on the origin of alphabetic writing) ; 

 but it is by no means intermediate between them in its nature ; on the contrary, 

 it is of the same general nature as an alphabet, in those respects in which the 

 latter can be brought into comparison with an ideagraphic system. They both 

 belong to phonetic writing, and still more, to a common species of such writing ; 

 inasmuch as both are distinguished by the essential property of being confined to 

 some determinate number of signs. However inferior, then, a syllabary may be 

 to a system of consonants and vowels, it is, notwithstanding, entitled to the same 

 general denomination. Hence I have, throughout the part of my work which 

 has been already published, called such systems syllabic alphabets ; and in doing 

 so I was justified not only by the real state of the case, but also by precedents of 

 high authority. Thus, although in the portions of the Ethiopic version of the 

 Bible which have been printed, the powers of the letters are undoubtedly syllabic, 

 and are described as such by all the earlier writers on the subject; yet the 

 collection of those letters was commonly denominated by them an alphabet, and 

 may be seen in the Prolegomena of Bishop Walton's Bible, as also in the short 

 grammatic treatise prefixed to Dr. Castell's Heptaglot Lexicon, printed with the 

 title of Alphabetum u3]^thiopicum placed over it. The Chinese Professor, 

 however, attached more weight to the opinions of certain modern grammarians, 

 whom he has not mentioned by name ; and with them he decided that a syllabary 

 is not an alphabet, but " a mixed system between alphabetic and hieroglyphic 

 writing." I should not object to this new use of old established words, if it had 

 not a tendency to perplex the mind, and to give a very erroneous view of the 

 subject under consideration. 



In the third place, the most extraordinary of the mistatements of M. Abel- 

 Remusat in the passage before us, is the assertion that the Ethiopic system of 

 phonetic signs is not a syllabary. If indeed he had insisted that this system was 

 not composed of " alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing mixed together," the 

 position would be at once admitted. But this truism could not be his meaning, 

 as the putting it forward would be merely fighting with a shadow ; for no one 

 ever contended that the Ethiopic characters were partly hieroglyphs. After all 

 then, to render him intelligible and read in his words something more than mere 

 unmei^nlng sounds, he must be considered as deserting his own definition 



