In the Latin, the celebrated name of Brutus alludes to the fact that Lucius Junius acted the assumed part of a brutish or foolish person in order to conceal his patriotic designs. The renowned cognomen of Coriolanus was first given in reference to the assault of Corioli by a Roman soldier. The name of Publicola expressed the attachment of the first individual who bore it to the rights and interests of the people. Every reader of Roman history knows what splendid associations of an historical kind are connected with the names of Capitolinus and Africanus. And names were not only given by the Romans in reference to personal achievements and historical events, but as expressive of mental qualities, occupations, and situations in life. Accordingly, one man is called Egerius for his poverty; another is called Serranus in allusion to his business as a cultivator of the soil; another is called Cato out of regard to his wisdom.

§ 25. Of the origin and significancy of the names of places. The names of places also have a meaning; it is sometimes a direct and positive significancy, at others only an allusion to historical facts. There is ample reason for believing that this is true almost without exception, although the original import is now, in many cases, lost.

The ancient Hebrews came to a mountainous ridge; they saw that it was plentifully watered, and that it was clothed, even to its summit, with oaks and firs, with laurels and olives; and they named it Mount Carmel, which means in the Hebrew tongue the mount of the garden of God. An early Christian teacher, according to the traditions of the country, having been put to death on a certain hill, it was thence called Montmartre; the name, to this day, of a celebrated eminence in the neighbourhood of Paris. When Columbus entered a capacious and safe harbour, with a rich and beautiful surrounding country, he called the place Puerto Bello, by a name descriptive of its predominant features. And so of instances without number.

On this subject a careful examination of the various dialects of the North American Savages would undoubtedly throw light. The meaning of very many proper names has already been ascertained, with a greater or less degree of probability, by careful inquirers into those languages. A company of Indians, seated on the banks of a river, and seeing it opposed and violently driven in different directions by the projecting rocks, would naturally enough call it the Kenaway, which means, in the Shawanese tongue, the river of whirlpools. Among many other similar instances, the words Mississippi and Niagara, which have no meaning for an Anglo-American, are accurately descriptive in the Aboriginal dialects; the former signifying the great river, and the latter the thunder of waters.

CHAPTER III.

WRITTEN SIGNS.

§ 26. Of the causes which led to the formation of written signs. THE formation of oral language preceded that of WRITTEN language, by which we understand those artificial signs which are addressed to the eye instead of the ear. With all the advantages of oral language, men could not long be insensible to the great convenience of a mode of communication which did not require personal presence. Previously to resorting to written signs, the transmission of commands from one place to another required the agency of persons especially commissioned for that purpose. Laborious and expensive as was this method of sending communications, it was not always a successful one. The most faithful messenger was liable to misunderstand the subject of his embassy, or to fail in communicating it with precision to others.

All history, likewise, during the period antecedent to the invention of written language, was necessarily imbodied in traditions. The father, who had himself

participated in great national events, told them to the son, and the son repeated them in the ears of the succeeding generation. It was thus that the poems of Ossian are said to have been handed down. It was thus, according to Tacitus (DE MORIBUS GERMANORUM, § 2, 3), that the legends and heroic songs of the ancient tribes of Germany were transmitted. And it was from traditions, repeated through succeeding ages, that Garcillasso composed the history of the Incas of Peru.

Sometimes the rude nations of antiquity assisted their traditionary recollections by planting groves, throwing together monumental heaps of stones, and instituting games; but even these precautions did not avail. Various mistakes were found to arise; statements became confused and perplexed, till the unadorned truths of real history could no longer be separated from the embellishments of fiction.-Being, therefore, put upon some other artificial method of making their thoughts known to each other at the present time, and of transmitting their knowledge to future ages, men at last invented the different forms of written language.

§ 27. The first artificial signs addressed to the eye were pictures. Although they did not find oral language suited to all their purposes, it seems to have been beyond their power immediately to invent alphabets. The object of their earliest efforts was exhausted in making visible sketches of actions and events precisely as they

exist.

The expression of ideas in this method has been more or less practised in all nations during the early periods of their history, and has been of considerable aid to them in making out the record of their early annals. We are informed in the Pentateuch that figures were embroidered in the curtains of the HOLY OF HOLIES; and learn from the ancient poems of Homer that Helen wrought in embroidery the pictures of the battles in which the attractions of her own person had

caused the Greeks and Trojans to be engaged.-The expression of ideas by painting in colours, or by pictorial writing in other ways, is found to exist among the Savages of North America. Bows and arrows, hatchets, animals of various kinds, are imprinted on the bodies of their chiefs, the indications of their calling, and of their heroic qualities. They go further, and are able to point out actions, situations, and events, although imperfectly. They often, in their journeyings, leave behind them figures, either painted or rudely carved, which convey much important information to those who happen afterward to come the same way.

A recent and somewhat striking illustration of this topic cannot well be omitted. It is found in the Journal of an expedition that was sent out in 1820 to explore the northwestern region of the United States. A part of the company, in passing across from the River St. Louis to Sandy Lake, had missed their way, together with their Indian attendants, and could not tell where they were. In consequence of being in this situation, the Indians, not knowing what might be the result, determined to leave, at a certain place, a memorial of their journey, for the information of such of their tribe as might happen to come in that direction afterward. In the party there was a military officer, a person whom the Indians understood to be an attorney, and a mineralogist; eight were armed; when they halted they formed three encampments. The Savages went to work and traced out with their knives upon a piece of birch bark a man with a sword for the officer, another human figure with a book in his hand for the lawyer, and a third with a hammer for the mineralogist; three ascending columns of smoke denoted the three encampments, and eight muskets the number of armed men, &c.*

We find pictorial delineations to have been practised, in particular, among the original inhabitants of Mexico. It is related by historians, that when the Spaniards first landed upon that coast, the natives *Schoolcraft's Narrative Journal, chap. viii.

despatched messengers to the King Montezuma, with a representation painted on cloth of the landing and appearance of the Europeans. The events and appearances which they wished to describe were new to them, and these pictured representations were the methods which they adopted, in preference to any other, to express those ideas which they deemed it important the king should immediately possess.

Pictures, like the language of mere gesticulation, are a very imperfect mode of communicating ideas, as they must, from their very nature, be limited, in a great degree, to the description of external events. They fail in disclosing the connexions of those events, in developing dispositions, intricate trains of thought, and, in some measure, the passions. Attempts were therefore soon made to introduce another form of writing, called hieroglyphics.

§ 28. Of hieroglyphical writing.

HIEROGLYPHICS (from the Greek words HIEROS, sacred, and GLUPHO, to carve) are figures, sometimes painted or embroidered, and at others carved out, used to express ideas. They differ from pictorial writing chiefly in being an abridgment from it, and also in this particular, that they select, by the aid of analogies more or less remote, figures for the purpose of expressing the less obvious mental emotions and abstract truths.

Hieroglyphics were employed much more among the Egyptians than elsewhere, and the whole art probably arose in this way. The method of communicating thoughts by means of paintings, as among the Mexicans, and which undoubtedly existed among the Egyptians previous to the invention of Hieroglyphics, was found inconvenient. The work was difficult in the execution, and bulky when it was completed; and there was, accordingly, very soon an attempt at the abridgment of that method. Hence the head was used to designate a man; two or more hands, with weapons opposed, a battle; a scaling ladder set against