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452 making it serve the needs of a far from despicable civilization. The germ of a superior development which we saw in the totem-figures of the Indian depiction was in their use made to a certain extent fruitful. Every Mexican name, whether of place or person, was composed of significant words, and could in most cases be signified hieroglyphically—just as we, for instance, might signify 'Mr. Arrowsmith, of Hull,' by an arrow and a human figure holding a hammer, placed within or above the hull of a vessel. So also, the periods, of greater or less length, which made up their intricate and skilfully constructed calendar, all derived their appellations from natural objects, and were intimated in writing by the figures of those objects. Thus the Mexican annals were full of names and dates composed of figures designating the spoken signs of things; and the idea of a hieroglyphic method of writing, which should found itself on spoken language, following the progress of oral narration and attempting to signify this alone, lay apparently within their easy reach; and would, possibly, have been reached in due time, had the Mexican culture been allowed to continue its career of progress uninterfered with. Authorities are somewhat at variance, indeed, as to what was the real condition and character of the Mexican picture-writing at the time of the Conquest, some holding that it had already become a representation of continuous spoken texts. That there was a quite extensive Mexican literature is certain; but the ignorant fanaticism and superstition of the Spanish conquerors almost swept it out of existence, destroying at the same time the key to its comprehension, which has not yet been fully recovered.

In Egypt, the same beginnings have grown into an institution of quite a different character. The Egyptian hieroglyphs, in even the very earliest monuments preserved to us, form a completely elaborated system, of intricate constitution and high development; it undergoes hardly a perceptible change during all the long period covered by the monumental records: yet its transparency of structure is such that it exhibits in no small degree, like the grammatical structure of the Sanskrit language, its own history. In its origin and