explained to the Spaniards, after their conquest of that country." I shall give you an example. See Diagrams No. 1 and 2. To make this point a little more plain and intelligible, supposing I intended to read a lecture in hieroglyphics to the inhabitants of this country, I would send out Diagram No. 3, into every county in England. Look at it and then say, whether, in your opinion, the people would be likely to understand it? I must tell you that it contains a touching description of the political condition of a great people. "The hand of the Lord was upon me," says the Prophet, "and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about, and, Behold! they were very many in the open valley; and Lo! they were very dry." No doubt the Prophet was led to suppose that some dreadful catastrophe had overtaken the population of this extended district, and swept them into one common vortex. He could not have formed the remotest conception of the import of this hieroglyphic, had not God given him a key to its meaning; but when he was informed that these bones 66 were the whole house of Israel," he saw, at once, that they

a

of the first generations of men. 3. The third improvement provided a sign for expressing a sound, instead of denoting a thing. In order to write the name of a place, for instance," the Egyptians would arrange a certain number of objects, the initial letters of which, when pronounced, would furnish the name required. In writing the word London, on this principle, they would have taken the pictures of a lion, an oak, a net, a door, an oval, and a nail, the initial sounds, or first letters of which words, would give the name of the British capital." I have introduced into Diagram No. 4, a word in which a greater number of objects are combined. You will perceive that the letter simply expresses the initial sound in the name of each picture. 4. After a certain time there arose from the modified hieroglyphic a regular alphabet constructed so as to express the various sounds uttered by the human voice." This alphabet represented words indepen dently of objects. At last they found out that way of writing in which the vowels and consonants are expressed separately, by so many distinct characters. By this sublime invention men were enabled, by a small number of characters repeated and differently

b

a Dr. Russell, 179. b Ibid 179.

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combined, to express all their ideas and all their words, with equal precision and utility. But the time of the invention of Egyptian letters cannot be ascertained, as hieroglyphics continued in use long after they had been found out, as is evident from public monuments. If Warburton has made it evident that they had a class of hieroglyphics, with the meaning of which the common people were familiar, he has made it equally clear, that they had a more sacred class, into the knowledge of which the public were not initiated. Hence from the different kinds of hieroglyphics employed, and the constant change to which the whole system was liable, it was impossible to apply with certainty any general principle of interpretation. From these statements two facts may be deduced:-1. That had the Egyptians really possessed, as Infidels say they did, just conceptions of the Supreme Being of the creation of the world-and of the general laws of Providence, together with a comprehensive knowledge of the attributes of the one, and of facts and circumstances illustrative of the other, still their hieroglyphics were too limited and too ambiguous to admit of their arranging such conceptions, knowledge, facts and circum

e Warburton, v. ii. 138.