Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/19

Rh It is the business of the Archaeologist to read these hieroglyphics, not graven on the rock, but handed down in the memory and embodied in the solemn acts of races, to elicit these faint rays of historical evidence, latent in the tomb.

Manners differ from customs, in that they furnish rather general evidence of a nation's character than special evidence for particular facts; that they are neither commemorative nor symbolic.

It was the custom of the last century to drink the king's health after dinner; it is part of the general history of English manners to know how our ancestors comported themselves at their meals, and when they first began to use forks.

Traces of ancient manners must be sought, as we seek for customs, in the secluded life of the peasantry, or we must discern them half-obliterated beneath the palimpsest surface of modern society, and this palimpsest must be read by a diligent collation not only with early literature, but with the picture of ancient manners preserved in Monuments of Art.

Such then is a slight outline of the Oral evidence of Archaeology. It is inferior in dignity either to Written or to Monumental evidence, because of all the means which man possesses for utterance and record, the oral is the most transient.

We may add that animals are not altogether destitute of oral utterance. Though they do not articulate, they communicate their meaning vocally, and by gesticulation; and some of them can imitate articulate speech, action, and music.

But no animal but man draws or writes, or leaves behind him conscious monumental record.

It is because man can draw, because he possesses the distinctive faculty of imitating forms and expressing thoughts not only by his own gesticulations, but by and through some material external to himself, that he has acquired the inestimable power of writing. This general assertion, that all writing has its origin in drawing is, perhaps, open to discussion, but those who have most deeply investigated the question, have been led to this conclusion, by a comparison of the most primitive systems of writing now extant.

It is stated by these authorities that the elements of all written character are to be found in the Picture, or Direct Representation of some visible object; that such Pictures