unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes with the blood of grapes.

"His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk."

The whole of this imagery might be engraven in hieroglyphics; but not one of the sister arts alone can do it justice, for it combines the excellencies of all three,picture to the eye, music to the ear, poetry to the mind.

C

Early Eloquence:

The death of Jacob brings us to the year 2315 from the creation, and consequently includes the earliest era in profane history, of which any authentic records remain concerning those celebrated nations of antiquity, among whom arts and sciences flourished while Greece and Italy were yet unpeopled or unknown. It has been intimated that verse was antecedent to prose in the progress of literature. It is true, that in the book of Genesis, many conversations are given; and in various instances, no doubt, the very words employed by the speakers have been preserved; but none of these having been artificially constructed for the purpose of identifying and perpetuating the sentiments with the phraseology, they come not under that definition of literature which has been assumed in this Essay; in fact, they are themselves integral portions of a literary work; namely, the first book of Moses, which belongs to a later period. Undoubtedly traditions of what had been said, as well as what had been done, by patriarchs

and eminent personages, were perpetuated in families through all generations, from Adam downward; but, as it was enough for the purposes of tradition, that events and discourses should be substantially true, every one who repeated either would do so in his own language, rudely or eloquently, according to his taste or talent. Indeed, to sum up in a few sentences what had been delivered in a long dialogue, it was so far from being necessary, that it was obviously impossible to use the actual words of the speakers, even if they had been remembered.

In one instance, however, without violating probability, an exception may be made in favour of the speech of Judah to Joseph, when he and his brethren had been brought back to Egypt by the stratagem of putting the silver cup into Benjamin's sack. This address is perhaps the finest piece of pleading ever reported, though nothing can be more simple and inartificial than the diction and arrangement of the whole. In truth, it is little else than a family history, with the principal incidents of which Joseph himself was well acquainted, and in the most afflictive of which he had borne his bitter part. There is, moreover, a dramatic interest in the scene, arising from the reader's being in the secret of Joseph's consciousness; and thence knowing that the force of every fact and argument was far more searching and heartmelting to the hearer, than the speaker himself could imagine, from his ignorance of the person whom he was addressing. I must not quote more than one paragraph, referring to a conversation between them

on their former visit to Egypt. Judah says to Joseph :

ye

My Lord asked his servants, saying, — Have a father or a brother? And we said unto my Lord, We have a father, an old man - and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, — and his father loveth him."

Is not this the voice of nature speaking with human lips, and speaking to all the affections that make life precious?" an old man"-"a father"-" a child of his old age 66 a little one" "whose brother was dead"-" he left alone of his mother, and his father loveth him." Love, in man at least, can go no further, — in woman perhaps it may. Now, as Judah must be supposed to have prepared his appeal for this interview, the speech itself may be considered as the earliest specimen of eloquence; and surely, in its kind, it has never been surpassed. I have dwelt the more on this specimen, because it is the model of almost every other regular speech that can be found in the Sacred Scriptures. In these, recapitulatory narrative brings home to the hearers the peculiar deduction which the speaker would establish; having, as it were, by lines of circumvallation, completely secured access to every point of attack at once, he carries by storm at last the object of his harangue. The whole book of Deuteronomy furnishes a series of such historical arguments; Moses therein addressing, as with the living voice, the people whom he had brought out of Egypt, and led during forty years in the wilderness. And these consecutive

discourses were probably so delivered to the tribes bodily assembled from time to time, to receive instruction from the lips of a legislator, who could call the heavens and the earth to be his auditors, and say with authority, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass."

Joshua's exhortation to the elders before his death; Samuel's remonstrance with the Israelites for their perverseness in demanding a king; Solomon's speech to the people before the dedication of the temple; Daniel's confession of the sins of the captives in Babylon, and their forefathers; Ezra's prayer after the return of the Jews to their own land, laid desolate; and, in the New Testament, Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost; Stephen's discourse before the Sanhedrim; and Paul's two defences before the council, and before Agrippa:-These are all of the same class of oratory, in which the details are long, the arguments brief, and the conclusion personal; so that this peculiar mode of eloquence may be traced for two thousand years; and probably, from its plainness and energy of application, was usual among all the eastern people.

But whatever may be conjectured concerning artificial prose before the invention of writing, it is certain that verse existed from the infancy of the world, and was employed for history, laws, chronology, devotion, oracles, love, war, fables, proverbs, and prophecy, indeed, for every combination of thoughts, which were > intended to be long and well remembered.

Invention of Letters.

Having now arrived at that period, where sacred and profane history meet, the former, like a clear stream issuing from a known fountain, and defined along its whole course through a peopled and cultivated region; the latter, dimly and slowly disentangling its mazes from the shades of impenetrable forests,

"Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,”

-

BYRON.

but henceforward widening, deepening, brightening on its way, the first subject that claims our attention is the learning of the Egyptians, of which much has been said and little is known. The testimony, however, of all antiquity, as well as the superb and stupendous monuments of architecture, and traces of literature in the shape of hieroglyphics and symbols, however unintelligible, prove that they were a wonderful people for gigantic enterprise and indefatigable industry, in achieving what were then the highest feats of manual, intellectual, and mechanic power. On these we shall not expatiate here, as another opportunity will be afforded in the next paper of this series, of considering by whom, and by what means, such marvellous works were executed. At present we shall only allude to them generally, in connection with the discovery of alphabetical writing. When, where, and by whom, letters were invented, it is now in vain to imagine. Notwithstanding the pretensions of Hermes Trismegistos, Memnon, Cadmus, and