162 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
was young. The characters, whether engraved or written, are, it may be, 
so old that they are again new. But their designs were born of mind, and 
still possess a magic vitality — some strange affinity with, and significance 
for, mind — as if through them the ancient world would whisper its long- 
hoarded secret. And when the daylight once again falls on the old tracings, 
the brooding mind discovers that they have a message : it is as if from the 
still undeciphered characters 
“ Thought leapt out to wed with Thought 
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.” 
If, by some chance discovery or the labour of many years, a clue to the 
interpretation of the old designs be found, then, it may be, the literature 
or history of an epoch that had passed out of human memory becomes 
again legible. For the alphabet, the mere ABC — like an Iliad in a nut- 
shell — contains the record of man’s early existence. Through these little 
symbols the intellectual history of mankind may be traced backwards 
towards its obscure beginnings, just as by following the course of some 
river one may explore a continent. But how mighty that sacred river of 
language, that broad vehicle of thought ! How remote and inaccessible 
its source ! Through how many unmapped deserts and past how many 
different civilisations has it flowed ; ever swelling, ever changing ; gleaming 
now in the sunlight of history, or again hidden in the mists of hypothesis 
and uncertainty ! Rome and Greece were on its banks ; it flowed past 
Egypt and Phoenicia; important tributaries reached it from that great 
ffEgean, or Mycenaean, empire ; and here and there along its course some 
stream of newly acquired letters or methods of writing was merged in its 
waters. And now, in modern times, this great river is still flowing, noise- 
lessly carrying down to us on its broad bosom the literary flotsam and 
jetsam of civilisations that have perished; till, at its mouth — that ever- 
changing boundary which we name “ to-day” — the quiet of its far- 
travelled waters is disturbed by the multitudinous waves of the spoken 
tongue. That sacred river of learning, of language — the alphabet ! When 
one thinks of its measureless course, and of those empires, so stately, so 
transitory, whose intellectual commerce was borne on its waters, one 
pictures the whole as existing in some magic dreamland, like that which 
the poet saw in his vision : 
“ In Xanadn did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree : 
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea.” 
