358 NATURE OF LANGUAGES. 



Connection of f tne influence of events more perfectly than in any other 

 language with wav so in the two instances which we are referring to as 

 toitie^Sd 011 " illustrations of these remarks, the French conquest did not 

 history. make that deep and abiding impression which the Roman one 



had done. - A thousand years had elapsed between the invasion of Ca3sar 

 and that of William of Normandy, eight hundred only from the latter 

 event to our times, yet the influence of the masculine and civilizing Ro- 

 man has reached through that long interval, has made the deepest im- 

 pression en the national character, and is manifested in almost one half 

 of the sentences that we utter. 



Connected with articulate speech, it may not be out of place to allude 

 Registry of briefly to those great advances which have been made by the 

 in^a^d^rtnf" g enms ^ man i n tne permanent record or registering by 

 ing. written signs ; and as sounds are of two kinds, musical and 



articulate, so we have two distinct methods of writing ; and this, leaving 

 out all the earlier and more imperfect forms, a method for music and one 

 for speech. Of the former, it is scarcely necessary to remark that it is 

 universal ; the combination of sounds designed to be conveyed is com- 

 prehended at once by men of every nation ; but in the writing for speech, 

 various methods have been employed at different times and by different 

 Different meth nat i ns > ^ rom mere picture writing, each sign of which called 

 ods of express- forth in different languages different sounds, through the hi- 

 ing language. er0 giyphi c and Chinese methods up to that most splendid 

 invention of later ages, alphabetic writing, the principle of which is ab- 

 solutely perfect, because it is natural, being to decompose each word into 

 each constituent vowel or consonant sound which it contains, and to 

 write a mark or letter representing each of those sounds. Though many 

 circumstances have contributed to the advancement of the human race, it 

 can not be doubted that this invention has exceeded all others in power, 

 and that alphabetic writing has been the great instrument of civilization. 



