*88 ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 



can be no doubt, that, in whatever part of this quarter of the globe the system of 

 alphabetic characters originated, they were readily and rapidly introduced 

 into every other part. Abraham might, hence, have learned them in Chaldea, 

 or in Canaan, and communicated them wherever he sojourned; as Ishmael, 

 probably, communicated them shortly afterward to Arabia, upon his exile 

 from his father's house. 



The proper Phoenician alphabet seems to have consisted of not more than 

 thirteen letters at first ; it afterward had three added to it, making sixteen in 

 the whole, and in this number it seems to have been earliest employed by 

 many of the adjoining countries, and is distinguished by the name of the Sa- 

 maritan, or ancient Hebrew, the terms and characters being nearly the same 

 us the Phoenician. The Chaldeans introduced some kind of change into the 

 form of the letters, made them more elegant, and added six other letters, since 

 the Samaritan alphabet did not se-em sufficiently full to express all the articu- 

 lations of their speech. And in this manner, with various changes and aug- 

 mentations, the Phoenician alphabet can be traced throughout every part 

 of ancient and modern Europe ; every region of Africa, where writing of any 

 kind is current, and the western countries of Asia. 



Over a very extensive portion of this last continent, however, we meet with 

 an alphabet that has no common origin or conformity of principle with any 

 hitherto described. This is the Nagari, or Deva-nagari, as it is called by 

 way of pre-eminence. I consists of not less than fifty letters, of which six- 

 teen are vowels and thirty-four consonants, all arranged in the order of the 

 alphabet, with a systematic precision that is to be found nowhere else. The 

 vowels take the lead, beginning with those most easily uttered, and termi- 

 nating with those which approach towards the consonant sound. The con- 

 sonants, then follow in five regular series of gutturals, compounds, palatines, 

 dentals, and labials : the whole closing with letters expressive of sounds that 

 do not exactly enter into any of the preceding series, and which may be re- 

 garded as forming a general appendix. This alphabet is asserted by many 

 learned Bramins to be of a higher antiquity than any other ; and there can be 

 no doubt that it has a just claim to a very remote date. But its very perfec- 

 tion is a sufficient confutation of its having been invented first of all : some- 

 thing far more rude and incondite must have preceded and paved the way for 

 it; and in the complex characters of which it consists, we seem to have the 

 relics of that emblematic or picture-language, which I have thus endeavoured 

 to prove has laid a foundation 'for alphabetic writing in every part of the 

 world. With a few trifling variations, this correct and elegant alphabet ex- 

 tends from the Persian Gulf to China; but it has no pretensions to rival the 

 antiquity of the Phoenician. It is unborrowed, but of later origin. 



Such is a brief history of the noblest art that has ever been invented by the 

 unassisted efforts of human understanding; an art that gives stability to 

 thought, forms a cabinet for our ideas, and presents, in imperishable colours, 

 a speaking portraiture of the soul. Without this, hard indeed would be the 

 separation of friends ; and the traveller would become an exile from his native 

 home, vainly languishing for the consolatory information that his wife, his 

 children, his kinsmen, his country, were in a state of health and prosperity, 

 and himself still embalmed in their affections. Without this, what to us 

 would be the wisdom of past ages, or the history of former states ? The chain 

 of nature would be broken through all its links, and every generation become 

 an isolated and individual world, equally cut off, as by an irremeable abyss, 

 from its ancestors and from posterity. While the language of the lips is 

 fleeting as the breath itself, and confined to a single spot as well as to a sin- 

 gle moment, the language of the pen enjoys, in many instances, an adaman- 

 tine existence, and will only perish amid the ruins of the globe. Before its 

 mighty touch time and space become annihilated ; it joins epoch to epoch, 

 and pole to pole; it gives unity to the works of creation and Providence, and 

 enables us to trace from the beginning of things to the end. It is the great 

 sun of the moral world, that warms, and stimulates, and vivifies, and irradi- 

 ates, and developes, and matures the best virtues of the heart, and the best 



