118 



WRITING. 



attendance for two years. The candidate being 

 admitted to his trials, i< first examined on his know- 

 ledge of Scotch law by three private examinators; 

 and, at the distance of three months, he is examined 

 in the hall of the society, by the public examinators, 

 in presence of the commissioners, on his knowledge 

 in conveyancing. The dues of his admission are 

 about 77, with some trifling perquisites to the 

 officers and gown-keepers, besides stamps on the in- 

 denture and commission. The system of education, 

 the time necessarily occupied in it, and the expence 

 with which it U attended, are well calculated to 

 secure respectable and well informed members. 



WRITING ; the art of expressing, by visible 

 signs or characters described on some material, 

 thoughts, feelings, or musical tones. With modern 

 civilized nations, it signifies more especially the art 

 of representing by certain characters the tones of 

 which our speech consists; that is, of representing 

 ideas by phonetic signs. Metaphorically, it is ap- 

 plied to style and composition, as the instrument 

 of conveyance is often taken for the thing conveyed. 

 Writing, if required by law for certain purposes, 

 means now, in most countries, the expression of 

 ideas by pen and ink, pencil writing being generally 

 considered invalid. The art of writing, especially 

 when reduced to simple phonetic alphabets like ours, 

 has, perhaps, done more than any other invention 

 for the improvement of the human race. It may, 

 like other great blessings, have been attended with 

 some evils ; but it has been the most efficient 

 means of raising mankind from barbarism to civili- 

 zation. Without its aid the. experience of each 

 generation would have been almost entirely lost to 

 succeeding ages, and only a faint glimmer of truth 

 could have been discerned through the mists of 

 tradition. For this reason, and because, in the 

 earliest ages, almost all knowledge is concentrated 

 in the caste of priests, it is easily explainable 

 that the art of writing is considered, in the 

 earliest periods of history, as something sacred, 

 and believed to have been brought by the gods to 

 men, or to have proceeded from immediate inspira- 

 tion, as in the case of the Greek Cadmus. If the 

 art of tilling the ground was deemed so great a 

 blessing that the gods were represented as having 

 taught it to men, how much more must mankind 

 have been inclined to refer the art of writing the 

 great source of civilization to the same origin, 

 after the slow process of its developement had been 

 forgotten ! We have spoken of the probable mode 

 of its developement in the article Hieroglyphics, 

 and will only add here a few remarks, which were 

 promised in that article. 



The picture-writing of Mexico, discovered when 

 that country was conquered by the Spaniards, is 

 one of the most interesting monuments of the pro- 

 gress of civilization, and the developement of the 

 human mind. Spineto, in his Lectures on the 

 Elements of Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Antiqui- 

 ties, describes a specimen of Mexican hieroglyphics, 

 which he saw in the library of the Escurial, and 

 which was imported to Europe by a Mexican, who 

 translated it into Spanish. The title of the book 

 is, History of the Empire of Mexico, with Notes 

 and Explanations. An account of it, taken from 

 Lecture vii, is here subjoined: M The translation 

 is divided into three parts. The first is a history 

 of the Mexican empire, containing the biography 

 and conquests of not less than eleven kings : the 

 second is a regular roll of the several taxes which 

 each conquered province or town paid to the royal 



treasury ; and the third, a digest of (heir civil law, 

 the largest branch of which \viis of their common 

 law, or jus patrium. In each of these pictures every 

 king is represented by different characteristics : the 

 length of his reign is marked by squares round the 

 j margin, which, when the reign happens to be ex- 

 tremely long, fill the four sides of the picture. In 

 each square there is a small circle to signify the 

 year a mark which they repeat according to its 

 number till they reach thirteen, after which they 

 begin over again to count one ; and under 

 small circles there is a kind of hieroglyphic figure, 

 which is repeated in every fourth square. In all 

 the pictures that exhibit the reign of each king, 

 there is a figure which shows the nature of his 

 government, and, therefore, varies according to the 

 circumstances and the events that took place during 

 his reign. In this picture it is a shield or a target, 

 crossed by four lances, which means that this king 

 subdued, by force of arms, four towns or people. 

 They are expressed by four rough drawings of a 

 house, to which a symbol, or hieroglyphic figure, 

 denoting the name of each, has been attached. In 

 the first, we have a tree; in the second, another 

 tree of a different sort ; in the third, a kind of bas- 

 ket; in the fourth, a sort of box, with two basket-. 

 These exhibitions I am unable to explain ; but they, 

 no doubt, were perfectly intelligible to the people, 

 and perhaps might have had a reference to the natural 

 productions of the subdued provinces. To mark the 

 beginning of the reign, and the different epochs in 

 which a king performed any of the actions mentioned 

 in the picture, or even his death, they painted the 

 figure of the king, with his characteristic emblem, 

 which denotes his name, opposite to the year in which 

 the event had taken place. Thus, in this picture, 

 the king's name is said to be Acamapichtli, and his 

 figure is repeated twice ; opposite, the first square, 

 which marks the beginning of his reign, and oppo- 

 site, the eighth equate, which shows that in the 

 eighth year of his reign he put to death the chiefs 

 of the four towns he had conquered. This circum- 

 stance is expressed by four heads placed before him, 

 distinguished by the same hieroglyphical characters 

 which mark the towns or provinces over which they 

 reigned. Across the figure of the king there is a 

 kind of sash, with a knot on his shoulder, which, 

 by its length and breadth, means the number of 

 wives and children he had. In the present instance, 

 it seems not to be deficient in either of these di- 

 mensions. I am told that there is another mark to 

 express the quality and number of children, whether 

 male or female ; but, to confess my ignorance, I 

 could never discover it, although I have observed 

 all the pictures of the several reigns recorded by 

 this curious piece of history, with all possible at- 

 tention. To the picture of each reigri a second 

 picture was invariably attached, which indicated 

 the other actions of the sovereign as a politician, 

 and the other events that had distinguished his 

 government. The whole account given by Purchas 

 is curious and highly amusing. In recording the 

 tribute or taxes which each town had to pay, as it 

 was paid in kind, it seems that the Mexicans had 

 adopted the plan of drawing the figure of the ob- 

 ject. Thus to represent a basket of cacao-meal, 

 or of any other sort of corn, they drew the figure 

 of a basket containing the ears of corn, or the meal 

 extracted from the fruit of that tree or plant. To 

 represent suits of military clothing, armour, or 

 shields, they exhibited their respective figures: the 

 different sorts of mantles, whether of feathers or 



