522 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN 
from the first impression in clay, with the corner of 
a stick, either by intention or through accident, 
and to trace their progress from year to year, 
from age to age, and from nation to nation, and 
yet to find the primitive form shining forth, 
and carrying the mind back to the banks of the 
Euphrates, where civilization had just begun to 
dawn on the Eastern world, and to find that such 
a simple origin had kept the integrity of its 
character through so vast a span of ages, cannot 
but suggest to the mind a series of reflections 
teeming with interest of the most striking and 
peculiar nature, inasmuch as we may thus retrace 
the progress of our alphabet from our own times 
backwards step by step, until we reach a period 
in the history of man so near to that of his own 
origin, that we all but arrive at the very zero of 
research. 
T shall not fatigue the attention of my readers 
with any further remarks, trusting the rest to their 
own reflection, which will doubtless be of a grati- 
fying and interesting nature, provided that they 
are satisfied with the correctness of what I have 
advanced ; and as I have stepped from fact to 
fact, and have begged them to refer to the sources 
and objects which have supplied me with the data 
