tion, so has it only been perfected after many centuries of experiment and fruitless labour. We, to whom the Alphabetic system has been handed down as the bequest of a remote antiquity, find a difficulty in transporting our minds backwards to the period when it was yet unknown; the extreme simplicity of the method makes us accept it as a matter of course, as an instrument which man has always possessed, not as something only wrought out by patient, oft repeated trials in the course of ages. Till we study the Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are not aware how difficult it must have been for the more perfect Phonetic system to displace the Pictorial, how long they continued co-ordinate, what perplexity of rules this co-ordination engendered, how obstinately the routine of habit maintained an old method however intricate and inconvenient, against a new principle however simple and broad in its application. The history of writing, in a word, exhibits to us most impressively a type of that great struggle between new inventions and inveterate routine, out of which civilisation has been slowly and painfully evolved.

When we pass from the study of imperfect and transition systems of writing, such as the Mexican, Egyptian, Cuneiform, and Chinese, to the study of perfect alphabets, it is rather the tradition of the art from race to race, than the inventive genius shown in its development, which forms the subject of our inquiries.

The Phoenician alphabet is the primary source of the system of writing we now use. The Greek and Roman alphabets, each adapted from the Phoenician with certain additions and modifications, were gradually diffused by commerce or conquest through the length and breadth of the ancient civilised world. On the decay of the Western empire of the Romans, their alphabet, like their language, law, architecture, and sculpture, became the property of their Teutonic conquerors.

Rude hands now wielded these great instruments of civilisation; strong wills moulded and adapted them to new wants and conditions; and it was thus that the Roman alphabet, transferred from marble to parchment, no longer graven but written, was gradually transformed into that fantastic and complicated character which is popularly called black letter, and in which the original simple type is some

times as difficult to recognise, as it is to discern at the first glance the connection between the stately, clustered pier and richly sculptured capital of the Gothic cathedral, and its remote archetype, the Greek column.

The changes which the handwriting of the Western world underwent from the commencement of the Middle Ages to the revival of the simple Roman character in the first printed texts have been most clearly traced out, century by century, by means of the vast series of dated specimens of medieval writing still extant.

When we turn from the Palæography of the Western to that of the Eastern world, we find the evidence of the subject in a far less accessible state.

In tracing back the history of Oriental systems of writing, as in investigating the sources of Oriental civilisation, we cannot, as in the West, recognise in many varieties the same original classical type; there is no one paramount influence, no one continuous stream of tradition, no one alphabet the parent of all the rest; the chronological basis of the Palæography rests on much less certain grounds.

When this branch of the history of writing has been more studied, we shall be able to say more positively whether the Assyrian Cuneiform is a modification of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, whether the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the same elements, whether it was the parent not only of the Greek and the Roman, but also of the Semitic alphabets generally, and we shall probably discover more than one other independent source whence some of the Oriental alphabets may have been derived.

This, then, is one point of view in which the Archaeologist may regard all written memorials,-as evidence either of the invention or of the tradition of the alphabetic system; but the history of the art cannot be fully investigated without taking into account the nature of the writing materials employed. These materials have been very different in different ages and countries. Character may be either graven on hard materials, such as stone or metal, written on pliable materials, such as bark, papyrus, parchment, linen, paper, or impressed as the potters' names are on the Samian ware, or the legends of coins on a metallic surface. greater part of the writing of the ancient world has been preserved on the native rock, hewn stones, metallic tablets,

The

or baked clay, as in the case of the Cuneiform character. There was a preference for hard unpliable materials in classical antiquity just as there was a preference for parchment as a writing material all through the Middle Ages, both in Europe and Asia. As the harder materials fell into disuse, the character of course became more cursive, writings circulated more generally from hand to hand, and were multiplied by frequent copies not only to meet an increased demand, but because that which is written is more perishable than that which is graven; the stroke of the chisel is a more abiding record than the stroke of the pen.

In consequence of this difference in the writing material, the researches of the Palæographer of classical antiquity embrace a far wider field than those of the medieval Palæographer. It is in the marble and the granite, in the marketplaces, the temples, and the sepulchres of the ancients that we must search for their records; these were their libraries, their muniment rooms, their heralds' college. If Magna Charta had been ceded to the Roman plebs, instead of to the English nobles, it would not have been called Magna Charta, but Magna Tabula, or Magna Columna; most of the Diplomatic record of the ancients was a Lapidary record.

I have been as yet considering the written memorials of races only as they are evidence of the art of writing itself, but Archaeology has not only to study character and writing materials, but also to interpret more or less the meaning of the words written, and to inquire how far they have an historical value.

Now all written character, all literature, to use this word in its original sense, may be divided into two great classes,the Composed and the Documentary.

By Composed Literature I mean history, poetry, oratory, philosophy, and such like mental products; by Documentary Literature I mean all writings which have no claim to rank as literary composition,-such as deeds, charters, registers, calendars, lists, in a word, all those historical and literary materials, some of which are already incorporated in composed history and composed literature; some of which are stored up in national, ecclesiastical, municipal, or private archives; some of which yet remain in situ, associated with the architectural monuments and works of art on which they are inscribed, and some of which, uncared for or unknown,

VOL. VIII.

C

moulder on the surface of untravelled lands, or in the ruins of deserted cities.

Now, in regard to Composed Literature, it is obvious that its subject-matter is far too vast for the scope and limits of archaeological research; it is chiefly with its manuscript text that the Palæographer has to deal; his business is to collect, decipher, collate, edit. Printing transfers the text from his hands to those of the philologer, the historian, and the critic.

In dealing with the Literature of Documents, the Archaeologist has to do more than barely edit the text. On him, in a great measure, is devolved the task of interpretation and classification; the mere deciphering or printing the documents does not at once render them accessible to the general reader, nothing but long familiarity, acquired in the course of editing, can give dexterity and intelligence in their use. It is the business, then, of the Archaeologist to prepare for the historian the literature of documents generally, as Gruter has edited his great work on Latin inscriptions, or Muratori the documents of medieval Italy.

He must as far as possible ascertain the value of this unedited material in reference to what is already incorporated with printed literature, how far it suggests new views, supplies new facts, illustrates, corroborates, or disproves something previously acknowledged or disputed; whether, in a word, it will contribute anything to the great mass of human knowledge which printing already embodies.

Composed Literature should be as far as possible confronted with those written documents which are, in reference to it, vouchers, commentary, or supplement. Sometimes we possess the very materials which the historian used; sometimes we have access to evidence of which he had no knowledge.

Now, it is needless to insist on the historical value of such documents as the inscription of Darius on the rock of Behistan, the Rosetta stone, and the many hieroglyphical and cuneiform texts which the sagacity and learning of a Young, a Champollion, and a Rawlinson have taught the nineteenth century to interpret by means of these two trilingual keys.

Such evidence speaks for itself. When in the laboratory of the philologer and the historian these documents shall have been slowly transmuted into composed narrative, we may hope to contemplate the ancient world from a new point

of view. The narrow boundaries of classical chronology may be enlarged by these discoveries as the barriers of ancient geography were burst through by the adventurous prow of the Genoese navigator; events, dynasties, and personages, which flit before our strained eyes, far away in the dim offing of primeval history, shrouded in the fantastic haze of Hellenic mythology, may be revealed to us in more defined outlines, if not in perfect fulness of detail.

But it is not merely where there is such immediate promise of a great historical result that the Archaeologist must study written evidence, nor must he confine his labours to the editing what is already complete as a document; he must out of isolated and fragmentary materials construct instruments for the historian to use.

Roman coins are not Fasti, nor are Greek coins a treatise on ancient geography, yet the labour of numismatists has made the one almost the best authority for the chronology of the Roman empire, and has found in the other an inestimable commentary on Strabo and Ptolemy.

The seals, deeds, and sepulchral brasses of the Middle Ages are not in themselves pedigrees, but how have they not contributed to the legal proof of genealogies? The countless rolls relating to the property of individuals preserved in muniment rooms, seem many of them of little historical value; but out of them what a full and minute history of ancient tenures has been developed; what directories, and gazetteers, and inventories of the past, giving us the names, titles, and addresses of those historic personages, whom in reading the old chronicles we are perpetually liable to confound.

The pioneering labour which prepares the Literature of Documents will always be appreciated by a great historical mind. After a Gruter, an Eckhel, and a Muratori, come a Gibbon, a Niebuhr, a Sismondi.

Before we dismiss this branch of our subject, there is one more point to be noted, the use of written documents not for the immediate purposes of history, but subordinately, as evidence for archaeological classification. It is obviously easier to fix the date of an inscribed than of an uninscribed work of art, because Palæography has rules of criticism of its own, perfectly independent of those by which we judge of art or fabric. In arranging the Monumental evidence of Archaeology, we cannot dispense with the collateral illustration