GHOLOGICAL TOPICS. 
375 
cliaso, of love, or of holiday. By couvcutioiial signs iiicy announce io ilicir 
friends their victories or their defeats, tiic number of their Icilled and of tlunr 
prisoners. By the nuniljer or the form of tlie stones phiccd on his sepulchre 
tin^y explained the name, the qnality, the exploits of a defunct chieftain. 
Wiiile alive he had made them write them on his body by means of tattooing, 
which is less a mere ornament, as it has so long been thought, than the bio- 
graphy of the man and of his ancestors. 
" These traces drawn upon the earth, tliese trees, these rocks, these stones 
placed iu certain order or grouped in varied number, such was the first writing 
of these antediluvian peoples. Men like us, those first-born'made that which 
wc liave made since. As their ideas enlarged and complicated themselves they 
complicated also the means of communicating tliem ; their signs became more 
varied, more complex, more moveable. Not finding everywhere these signs or 
the material proper to fabricate them, they carried them with them. It is thus 
that the Romans carried with them their peuates and their household-gods. 
Some Asiatic and African nations still do the same ; their relics and their gods 
arc the characters of then- tongue. With us also has not each saint his 
symbol ? 
" If each individual or head of a family had had only those signs which belonged 
to himself they would have been understood by those around him, as his wife 
and his children, but he could not have communicated with his neighbour. He 
had, then, besides these special signs, or, if you please, this household lan- 
guage, general signs intended for all. Hence the analogy of types from dis- 
tances so great and in countries so different. They have been introduced 
as men, becoming more numerous, spread out from the cradle of their fore- 
fathers." 
It is thus our Trench author has let his imagination have play, and persuaded 
iiimself that he has found out the characters which constituted the first and 
universal material language. We cannot say that on this point om faith is 
great iu the accuracy of M. de Perthes' conclusions, but his speculations are 
suggestive ; and we have more than once turned our thoughts from these 
ethereal theories to those great monoliths (of which the so-called Druid stones 
aud Druid circles in our own lands are examples) tliat are found seemingly distri- 
buted nearly all over the world, presenting in regions far apart from each other 
remarkably similar characters ; —everywhere massive ; of local material ; of the 
simplest workmanship ; everywhere older than every other architectural erection; 
everywhere of unknown origin ; and everywhere with the strongest marks of 
the highest antiquity. Is it possible these may be the venerable monumeuts 
of the first wandering nations ? I know, of course, the opinions of our best 
antiquaries on British monuments of this class ; but I am by uo means per- 
suaded of their sepulchral origin, still less that many of them have ever been 
covered by mounds of earth. Not a stone, nor a coin, nor a relic of any kind 
has ever been discovered in or near them that could give a datum to their erec- 
tion. And the situations in which they are placed are very remarkable and 
different from those usually selected for burial-mounds, or barrows. 
I think there is no point bearing on these remarkable discoveries of 
stone-weapons which should not be tliorouglily considered before rejection. 
From the wildest theories at this moment we may be led to the discovery of 
important facts. 
The way in which M. Boucher de Perthes accounts for the great number, in 
certain localities, of these flint objects is singular and fanciful, and the passage 
is worth transcribing. 
" Any one visiting me may count them- by thousands, and yet I have kept 
only those which presented some interest. From those beds which I have 
called " Celtic" I have seen them drawn in barrows to metal the neighbouring 
