the chief substitute for writing was the Quipu, or knotted cord. This consisted of a main cord, with strings of different colours and lengths attached. The colour, the mode of making the loops, knots, or tufts, their distance from the main cord or from each other, had all of them their meaning. Each Quipu had its own keeper or interpreter, and by their means all public accounts were kept. The Wampum in North America was of a somewhat similar character; and in Polynesia, also, the same sort of Quipu is in use. One kept by the principal tax-gatherer in Hawaii is a knot of cord of 400 or 500 fathoms in length, subdivided again and again for the different districts and families.

There is a tradition among the Chinese of a similar system of recording events by means of a knotted cord having been in use among them previous to the invention of writing. The Chinese system of writing, though far superior to that of the Mexicans, is still not alphabetical, but syllabic. At the outset, the characters seem to have been pictorial; but the representations of the objects have now become so much conventionalized and changed, partly in consequence of the method of writing by means of a brush, that there is much difficulty in recognizing them. In the characters representing the words Sun or Day, Moon, Door, Carriage, Boy, the original pictorial origin is evident-as, indeed, it is in several other instances.

In some cases, compound characters are formed by the junction of others of a simple kind. The Sun and Moon together represent the word Ming, bright or clear. Water and Eye together symbolize tears.

With a monosyllabic language, the words of which are of necessity limited in number, one sound has often to represent more than one sense, and the Chinese characters have therefore been divided into phonetics or radicals-those which give the sound-and the classificatory or determinatives, or those which give the sense.

Thus, the sign for a door, with the determinative an ear, means to listen; with that of a corpse or of the heart, means sorrow, &c.

The Egyptian hieroglyphics present much analogy in character with the Chinese method of writing. In their earliest form they seem to have been principally pictorial, though also at the same time symbolic.

We find, for instance, that the representation of the vault of heaven, with a star suspended from it, typifies darkness or night; that the arms of a man holding a spear and shield are the symbol of to fight, and that thirst is typified by a calf running. The next stage would appear to have been syllabic, when a certain sign represented a syllable, though often with a second more truly literal sign affixed, denoting the final consonant of the syllable. To prevent mistakes, the signs representing words were often accompanied by other signs, which were merely determinative of the meaning. Thus three horizontal zigzag lines representing water showed that the previous symbol designated something connected with liquids or two legs walking, that the word bore reference to locomotion. Many hieroglyphics, however, appear to be purely literal-though, in the case of consonants, often having some vowel-sound implied. These literal hieroglyphics stand for the initial letters of the objects or ideas they represent. For instance, a goose flying is the equivalent of P, the initial of Pai, to fly; an owl stands for M, the first letter of Mulag, the Egyptian name of the bird.

The more careful pictorial representations of the objects such as are to be seen in sculptured hieroglyphics and in formal inscriptions required, however, too much time for their execution to be adopted as an ordinary means of writing. In consequence, the signs became conventionalized, and the salient characteristics of the object were seized on for the more cursive form of writing known as the hieratic. From this, again, was derived the writing known as demotic, in which many of the symbols have become so much changed and simplified, that it is with difficulty that they can be identified as descendants of originally pictorial forms.

A modified form of hieroglyphic writing is still in use among us, more especially in connection with the science of astronomy; and the conventional forms which now represent the signs of the Zodiac are very instructive as to the amount of modification such symbols are liable to undergo.

In Aries (P) and Taurus (8) the heads of the ram and the bull may still be recognized. Gemini is represented by the twin straight lines, II; Cancer by its claws, ; and Leo by its head and tail, Q. In the symbol for Virgo, there appears to have been some con

fusion between Astræa and the Virgin Mary, the sign being symbolized by the letters mb. The scales of Libra, the sting of Scorpio, and the arrow of Sagittarius, can still be traced in the symbols,, m, f. The twisted tail of Capricornus survives in V, and Aquarius is represented by two wavy lines of water, w. The remaining sign of Pisces has been much metamorphosed; but the two fishes, back to back, with head and tail alternating, can readily be reconstructed from the symbol .

The gradual simplification of form exhibited in these signs, and in the Chinese and hieratic systems of writing, must be borne in mind when studying the development of other systems.

With regard to the origin of the alphabet in common use in Europe, there can be no doubt; the testimony of classical historians, as well as that of the letters themselves, being conclusive as to its Phoenician source. The Greek myth of letters having been introduced by Cadmus, the Phoenician, seems simply to embody this truth; for there is much probability in the view which connects the name of Cadmus with the Semitic word Kedem, the East.

At what date letters were first in use in Greece is by no means certain, but Grote thought that they were absolutely unknown in the days of Homer and Hesiod (B.C. 850-776). It seems, however, probable that they were introduced at a somewhat earlier date. If the date which has been assigned to the famous Moabite Stone, of about 900 B.C., be correct, the correspondence in form between the archaic Greek letters and those on the stone raises a strong presumption in favour of letters having been imported into Greece at the time when the Phoenician alphabet was in that stage of development in which it occurs on the

stone.

Even the name of the alphabet preserves the memory of its Phoenician origin, for Alpha and Beta, the names of the two letters from which the word is derived, are not really Greek, but merely the Hellenized forms of the Phoenician Aleph and Beth. The same is the case with the names of all the other Greek letters down to Tau; the last five letters, Y, 4, X, Y, Q, being of later introduction.

The correspondence in form between the Roman, the Greek, and the early Phoenician. alphabet, as given on the Moabite Stone, can

readily be traced. It must, however, be remembered that the letters of the latter are written from right to left, or in the same manner as Hebrew, and not, as is the case with us, from left to right. In the early Greek inscriptions it appears to have been a matter of indifference in which direction the letters were placed. In some the lines are alternately in either direction, and this form of writing was known as Boustrophedon, or that which turned backwards and forwards, like an ox in ploughing.

In tracing the correspondence between the Roman, Greek, and Phoenician alphabets, but little need be said with regard to most of the letters.

As to the original identity of the three alphabets which have been discussed, there can be no doubt; neither can any exist as to the order in which the letters were originally arranged. For in the Hebrew Scriptures, the language of which may practically be regarded as the same as the Phoenician, there are several instances in which a succession of passages, each commencing with a different letter of the alphabet, present them in this order. A well-known example is afforded by the 119th Psalm, each of the twenty-two sections of which commences with a different letter, the name of which forms the heading to each in the English version of the Bible.

Taking the forms of the letters, as given on the Moabite Stone, in conjunction with the meaning of their names, such a similarity can in all cases be traced, though more certainly intentional in some letters than in others. This will be best shown in the following form:

Resh-the head. The head in profile. Shin-a tooth. A tricuspid tooth. Tau-a mark. A cross, like the mark still made by those who cannot write.

This correspondence in form can hardly be appreciated without diagrams, but in many instances is striking, and in none absolutely forced. There have, however, been numerous objections raised to such a view of the derivation of the forms of the Phoenician letters.

Lenormant and De Rougé would rather trace them to Egyptian hieratic characters; but the resemblances they point out between them are but slight, and in no instance does the Phoenician name of the letter agree with that of the object represented by the Egyptian hieratic. Moreover, the resemblances, when traced, are rather with later forms of Phoenician letters than with those on the Moabite Stone.

Mr. E. B. Tylor also considers that the theory maintained by Gesenius of the Phoenician letters being pictorial, can be shown to be unsafe. He thinks the resemblances between the letters and the objects to be but small, and the bond which attaches the name to the letter to be but slight; that the coincidences are not primary and essential, but secondary and superficial. In support of this view he instances the old Slavonic alphabet, and the Runic Futhore, in which the letters have names unlike those of our alphabet, but each with a meaning-the initials of the names giving the power of the letters. He suggests that in a similar manner Hebrew words may have been chosen as names for letters derived from

some extraneous source, such names having the proper initial letter, and also some suitability to describe its shape-the same as if in English we called

A-Arch or Arrowhead.
B-Bow or Butterfly.
C-Curve or Crescent.

This, however, is contrary to all analogy among methods of writing of which we know the development; and, moreover, several of

the names of the Hebrew letters are not actual words in common use in the Hebrew

writings, but words which have become obsolete, and of which, in one or two cases, it is hard to recover the meaning. The letters, moreover, cannot originally have been mere arbitrary signs, or there would have been greater distinctions between some of them, such as it was subsequently found desirable to introduce.

If, too, the Phoenician letters came from an extraneous source, we may well ask where it was, and how does it happen that no traces of the original names of the letters have been preserved.

In the Greek alphabet, which is undoubtedly derivative, the names of the letters would alone suffice to show the source from which it came; and the case of the Runic alphabet, derived from the same source, though with the letters rearranged and with new names given at a comparatively recent date, seems hardly to apply. The Runic names, moreover, exhibit no attempt to denote the forms of the letters, to which they are as inapplicable as the names in one of the Irish alphabets, in which each letter is called by the name of some

tree.

It seems, on the contrary, far more probable that the Phoenicians, possibly in the first instance borrowing the idea from the Egyptians, struck out for themselves a more purely literal, and therefore a more simple and useful alphabet. A classification of sounds once established, and a system of syllabic symbols once invented, the transition to a pure literal alphabet is compara tively easy, especially when once the syllabic symbols have, from the introduction of foreign words or from other causes, been employed for the initial sound only of the syllables they represent.

Such a change, involving a departure from old practice, might perhaps more readily take place in an adjacent country to that in

which the syllabic system prevailed, than in the country itself; and we may readily conceive a practical people like the Phoenicians importing from Egypt a system of pictorial writing thus modified.

Certainly their alphabet, unlike the letters of the later class of Egyptian hieroglyphics, does not appear to consist of merely a few survivors from a whole army of symbols. On the contrary, it seems to present some traces of arrangement; for the objects representing the letters appear to be grouped in pairs, each comprising two objects in some manner associated with each other; and between each pair is inserted a third letter, represented by an object not so immediately connected with those preceding it, but still not absolutely alien from them.

Thus the ox and the house are followed by the camel-an animal, by the way, not represented in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The door and the window are followed by the peg; the weapon and enclosure by the serpent; the hand and the palm by the oxgoad; the water and the fish by the support; the eye and the mouth by the reapinghook; the head and the back of the head by the tooth; and the alphabet concludes with the final mark, X.

It would be superfluous to attempt to point out the bearings of this question of the origin and development of the Phoenician alphabet on the history of civilization in Europe and Western Asia.

Future discoveries may possibly bring us nearer the cradle of this alphabet; but it seems probable that on the Moabite Stone we find the letters still retaining enough of their original pictorial character to justify a belief that they there occur in a comparatively early stage, and not removed by many centuries from the time when they were merely delineations of the objects, the names of which they have preserved. Assuming this to have been the case, what is the stage of culture to which the inventors of this alphabet appear to have attained?

They were not mere nomads or hunters, but a people with fixed dwellings for themselves and enclosures for their cattle. They were acquainted with agriculture, and had domesticated animals, and employed the ox as a beast of draught to cultivate fields, the produce of which they reaped with metallic sickles. In fact, their civilization would

seem to have been at least equal to that of the bronze-using people of the Swiss lakedwellings.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE.

THE subject of our cartoon is the well

known novelist. The name of Trollope was as familiar to the last generation of readers as it is to the present. Mrs. Fanny Trollope-she married, in 1809, Anthony Trollope, barrister-at-law-having lost her husband, applied herself to literature. In 1832, the year of the Reform Bill in England, she published her first book. It was about the United States, where she had lived for some time, and was called "Domestic Life of the Americans."

In England, it was read and enjoyed. In the States, the people did not like it-they did not appear to advantage in the book; but it made the reputation of the lady who had written it; and Mrs. Fanny Trollope continued to apply herself to the manufacture of interesting and clever books, her chef-d'œuvre being "The Widow Barnaby." The authoress died at Florence in 1863; and in the outskirts of that city her eldest son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, has made his home.

Her second son, the subject of this article, has made England his home, and the English people his study.

Anthony Trollope seems to have "thrown back" one generation. His grandfather was a parson; and it is in delineating the phases of clerical life, from the bishop to the curate, that this popular writer excels. Bishop Proudie, Archdeacon Grantley, the Rev. Obadiah Slope, Mr. Crawley of Hogglestock, are creations of his genius that have their originals in life. They are photographic portraits of men his readers know: nature clothed with the form of art: and from this exquisite truthfulness they derive their interest.

The conversations of the characters in his books are exactly the dialogues one hears in everyday life. One man turns to Trollope for his recreation, because "it is exactly like life, you know." Another man says: "When I pick up a novel, I want to be taken above everyday life. I want the ideal. I don't find this in Trollope." And so he does not read his books. These readers are types: the realist loving reality-which he finds; the idealist seeking for the noble, unselfish,