THE PRIMITIVE ALPHABET AND LANGUAGE OF THE ANCIENT ONES OF THE EARTH. BY MEANS OF WHICH CAN BE READ THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS HE author's preface is very long, and much of it of a purely perfonal character. The following extracts are all that need be quoted : "It is the object of the prefent work to direct the attention of the literati of England and of all who feel interested in the question- Which was the Primitive Alphabet of Man?' to a discovery made by the Author in the year 1848. Being an earnest student of fubjects tending to illuftrate or authenticate Holy Scripture, he formed an humble unit amongst the many thousands who flocked to the British Museum to gaze upon the exhumed remains of a mighty empire, infcribed with records written in a dumb Semitic character, brought to light by Mr. Layard's excavations. It was then he perceived the ftriking fimilarity between some of the early Greek letters and the cuneiform characters as exhibited on the Affyrian marbles. He obtained permission from the Museum authorities to copy the inscriptions, with a view to their elucidation, and he then collected an alphabet of the earliest Greek, principally from an Elian bronze tablet, now under the care of Mr. Newton, of the British Museum; and by comparing these with the cuneiform infcriptions, he found that all the various groups of characters, when diffected, were refolvable into the fimple nineteen letters exhibited in the first column of alphabets (vide Plate I.); fubSequent study and investigation have only tended to confirm this first conviction. As foon as he had formed the alphabet, he copied an infcription, and having a flight knowledge of Greek, tried to make it speak in that language; but he could only make |