74 ON THE DATE AND ORIGIN 
tion of their respective functions, a faculty! °® which is enjoyed by man 
alone, and elevates him above the animated world ; it has given, by 
an almost miraculous felicity, sound to the eye and sight to the ear ; 
it has perpetuated man’s transient and feeble voice through time 
indefinite and space without bound ; has connected in a silent lan- 
guage the nations and generations of man ; and out of his natural 
has compounded an ' artificial faculty, that concentrates the wis- 
dom of the species within the grasp of the individual. 
We cannot for a moment suppose that such an art was discovered 
by a savage people, whose mode of life or hypothetical creed se- 
cluded them from intercourse with their neighbours: such a people 
would least of all have suffered from the want of it, and were least 
likely to move themselves in its invention ; and on this consideration 
it has, with general consent, been attributed to a '*maritime people, 
whose pursuits connect them with adjoining and more distant tribes. 
16 The power of articulation. 
17 A phonetic letter (xa#orixw, a letter) is a visible sign to denote a spe- 
cific sound of the human voice. This sign is addressed to the eye, and 
throvgh it is received on the brain, as the sound which it is agreed to denote. 
A combination of these visible signs is, in like manner, received through the 
eye on the sensorium as a combination of such agreed sounds, or as a syllable, 
the constituent part of a word. Aristotle has said “words are marks of 
thoughts, letters of words,” a sentence which imperfectly conveys the func- 
tion of a letter; nor does the description of Mr. Astle analyze its operation, 
when he describes words as “ sounds significant, and letters as marks for such 
sounds.” But St. Augustine seems to have approached nearer to a defini- 
tion in his distinction between visible and audible language: “ Signa sunt 
verba visibilia verba signa audibilia.”—“ Signs are visible words, words audi- 
ble signs.” 
18 Prior to the time of David, the coasts of the Mediterranean belonged 
to a people at once warlike and commercial, from Ascalon to Sidon; and the 
last four battles fought by David with the Philistines left the victory unde- 
termined. We are left 1o conjecture, then, that the best result would be an 
armistice or a suspension of national inveteracies. The dominion of Tyre was 
unbroken, and the commercial treaties of Solomon and Hiram imply the in- 
dependence and equality of the latter during the most influential period of 
the Jewish domination ; and it may be inferred, from the same premises, that 
the former of those potentates was not in actual possession of the coasts of 
the Great Sea during that period. After the death of that judicious king, 
the divisions of Judah and Israel prepared them for subjugation under the 
successive yokes of the eastern and western empires of the world; and they 
are thenceforth, with some plea of human reason, as well as by divine dis- 
pensation, received as the “despectissima pars servientium” of the human fa- 
mily. It may be suspected [K1nas i. cap. iv.] that the influence of Solomon 
on the shores of the Mediterranean was derived from matrimonial alliances 
rather than from success of arms. 
