with words, figurative or tropical language would soon, from absolute necessity, become familiar. Would we describe a man, who possessed the mingled qualities of courage and ferocity and generosity; we should, in such a state of society, find it no easy matter to express these abstract qualities in words definitely appropriate: but, if we called the man a lion, addressing ourselves to a race of hunters who were well acquainted with the nature of that animal; we should make them, without further trouble, perfectly understand what we meant. On the same principle, we should call a dangerous and crafty and malicious man a snake in the `grass; a peaceful and industrious man, an ox; an ambitious and quick-sighted man, a hawk or an eagle; and a faithful and attached domestic, a dog. Accordingly, names of this description are perpetually assumed by the savage warriors of North-America, or conferred upon them by their warlike followers, One man is The Tyger; another, The Lion; a third, The Great Buffalo; and a fourth, The BloodHound. Thus we see, that the language of defective civilisation becomes of necessity a language of symbols.

If such, then, of necessity was the language of defective civilisation, such also would be the first rude attempt to express it in writing. The earliest manuscripts were neither more nor less than pictures: but these pictures closely followed the analogy of spoken language. Hence, like spoken language itself, they were partly proper and partly

tropical. A member of a half-civilised community, who wished to express to the eye the naked idea of 'a man, would rudely delineate the picture of a man: but such a delineation would be insufficient, if he wished to express a man marked by such or such qualities. How, then, would he manage, when in this difficulty? He would obviously transfer, to the sand or the leaf or the brick or the rock, the image which had become familiar to him in his ordinary conversation. A brave and ferocious and generous man he was already accustomed to denominate a lion: if, therefore, he wished to express such a man in writing, he would delineate a lion. In a similar manner, the person, whom he called a snake, he would paint a snake: the person, whom he called an ox, he would paint an ox: the person, whom he called an eagle, he would paint an eagle: and the person, whom he called a dog, he would paint a dog. But such a mode of delineation is no other than the tropical hieroglyphic or symbol in its earliest stage of existence: and, when once this method of writing had been adopted, the idea, upon which it was built, would readily suggest another involution. If, on account of his qualities, a single individual might aptly be represented by a lion or an eagle or an ox; it were easy and natural to employ the same symbols for the purpose of representing a body corporate or a nation: for nation bears to nation the same reference, that individual bears to individual. Hence, according to their attributed characteristics, this nation would be the

A

lion; that would be the bear; and that would be

the tyger.

Such a mode of writing, which in fact constitutes one great branch of the tropical hieroglyphics of Egypt, gave rise to the science of heraldry and the general prevalence of that science in all ages, under one modification or another, perpetuated and extended the form of speech to which it owed its own origin. Thus the dove was the ancient banner of the Assyrian Empire: and this circumstance led to the application of the name to the people themselves, who are thence by Jeremiah denominated the dove and the oppressing dove1. Thus also the eagle was the standard of the Roman empire: and this circumstance similarly produced that parabolical prophecy of our Lord; Wheresoever, the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. The same cause produced the same language among the minstrels of the middle ages: nor is such phraseology altogether obsolete even in the present day. Thus England was styled the leopard; Saxony, the white horse; and Denmark, the raven: and thus, according to their various armorial bearings, individual nobles were familiarly called, in the songs of their several domestic bards, the bear or the dragon or the boar or the dun bull or the silver greyhound.

1

This phraseology produced, on the one hand, the

See Jerem. xxv. 38. xlvi. 16. 1. 16., in the Latin Vulgate, which accurately expresses the true sense of the original. 2 Matt. xxiv. 28. Luke xvii. 37.

apologue or fable, and, on the other hand, the whole system of pagan onirocriticism.

Perhaps the most ancient specimen of the apologue, which has been handed down to us from primitive times, is the parable of Jotham'. But such a mode of composition is no way peculiar to the Israelites. Both the Roman fable of Menenius Agrippa, the Indian fables of Pidpay, and their direct imitation the Greek fables of Esop, all belong to the same class, and have all sprung from that phraseology which owed its own origin to the po verty of primeval language. Every apologue is a speaking hieroglyphic: and, if the story set forth in it be delineated by the pencil or the graving tool, a painted or a sculptured hieroglyphic is at once produced.

- On the same foundation is built the entire system of the old pagan onirocritics. They did not-inter→ pret dreams vaguely and loosely, according to the accidental humour of each particular soothsayer: but they proceeded according to certain fixed and definite rules, which rules themselves were founded upon the figurative language of symbols. Thus a wide-spreading tree, under the shade of which both men and animals might repose, was the hierogly phic of a powerful and wide-ruling prince; doubtless because such a prince had been so denominated during an early stage of society, when ideas were more copious than words. Hence Daniel scrupled

not to interpret the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, relative to a tree which first extends its branches far and wide and which afterward is hewn down to the ground, upon the acknowledged and familiar principle that such an hieroglyphic bore such a signification'. Hence also, on the self-same principle assumed as an universally accorded postulate, the Median onirocritics interpreted the dream of Astyages, that a vine sprang from the womb of his daughter and rapidly overspread the whole of Asia. Hence likewise the Persian magi still founded their interpretation on the basis of this identical principle, when consulted by Xerxes relative to his dream, that he was crowned with the wreath of an olivetree which covered all the earth but which suddenly and totally disappeared3. The same remark applies to all those onirocritical writers, whose decisions have come down to us. Artemidorus, and Astrampsychus, and Achmetes, and those other onirocritics who are mentioned by them, assume, as a general principle, that such and such hieroglyphics bear such and such a meaning and, this point having been laid down,

Dan. iv. 10-27. Compare Ezek. xxxi.

2 Herod. Hist. lib. i. c. 108.

3 Herod. Hist. Lib. vii. c. 19. Exactly similar again is the principle, on which Sophocles has constructed the dream of Clytemnestra. The ghost of the murdered Agamemnon plants his sceptre in the ground: and from it forthwith springs a flourishing branch, which overshadows the whole region of Mycena. Soph. Elect. ver. 419-425. Compare, in point of ideality, Isaiah xi. 1. 10. Zechar. iii. 8.