THE ART OF WRITING 265 



the most fanciful ideas of their connection 

 with decency. The history of dress throws an 

 interesting side-light upon human character. 

 Amongst the richer classes of Europe there has 

 been, during a thousand years and more, a desire 

 for change which has led to increasing alterations 

 of fashion. Until recently the poorer classes were 

 content to wear a customary dress. In India 

 fashions have hardly changed during many 

 centuries. 



There are tribes, with some pretensions to 

 culture, and much skill in handicraft and agri- 

 culture, that have remained ignorant of the art 

 of writing until they learnt from Christian mis- 

 sionaries that they might express their language 

 in Roman characters. Yet pictorial writing 

 appears to be an obvious development of such 

 elementary acquaintance with drawing as is 

 possessed by most savages. It seems easy to 

 represent the idea of a house by a rough picture 

 of one, and it is surprising that the art of writing 

 pictorially or ideographically did not become 

 as widespread as the use of fire or of the loom. 

 It was the idea upon which Egyptian hierogly- 

 phics were elaborated : they were eventually 

 turned to express syllables or letters, but continued 

 to be used ideographically until classical days. 

 The cuneiform characters of Mesopotamia were 

 similarly of pictorial origin. The natives 1 of North 

 and South America were familiar with the use 

 of pictorial writing ; and in the Bolivian museum 

 at La Paz there is a parchment, of comparatively 

 recent date, on which Indian hands have repre- 

 sented pictographically so abstruse a subject as 

 the tenets of Christianity. Ideographs are still 

 used by the Chinese, and in a less degree by the 

 Japanese. They have one great advantage : 



1 As also the inhabitants of Scandinavia during the Bronze age. 



