several words to add or substract one or the other does not this prove most clearly that those thoughts are wider and deeper than our speech, and are not subjected to it? Bacon overthrew this folly of mistaking words for thought when he said that words are. the money of fools, but only the counters of wise men.

We must, then, always remember that however needful writing may be to tell of what cannot be learned otherwise, it is but a hurtful hindrance when it takes the place of the direct knowledge of the senses. As the awakening of the renaissance taught men that words were but counters, and that no knowledge could be reached by dealing with words alone; so the awakening of this century has begun to teach us that the senses cannot grow and feed the mind when the fetters of writing are allowed to hold them back from the living touch of nature. Nay, more. As there is no growth of the mind in one way but at the cost of its fulness in another, so this trust in writing has plainly deadened the memory of the senses, which is always more ready in those who do not read, and it has even deadened the senses themselves. We must thus face our losses while we rejoice in our gains, that we may understand a little of the mind and the powers of man before writing. How keen and full his feeling for nature was is shown in the earliest writings of every race, before the mind had learned to trust to the crippled words of others, instead of the living touch, and while still the sense and feeling was alive to all nature. The greatest natural poetry, as all confess, is that of the Homeric poems and the early songs and epics of each land; before they are fettered by written example, and deadened by dwelling on words instead of things. It is this poetry before writing which touches our minds most widely, and lays hold of them with truest grasp. That, let us remember, is the touch of the mind of man before writing; and his words which we cherish and wonder at, which thrill us and overwhelm our feelings, these words are the language of

man before writing. That mind, that language, is what we have bartered away for another growth, and for a new order of things, which though it may be more needful for us is assuredly not more precious. And when the flagging thought has by the bonds of writing lost all life, and become a mere carcass, senseless and corrupt, then it is that from the man before writing fresh life is to be sought. In Greek history when epic poetry decayed, the lyric taken fresh from unwritten life rose in its place; when that too died in the grasp of writing, the dramatic form was borrowed from the unwritten chorus of the vintage feast; and that in turn, killed by over-writing, gave place to the bucolics taken from the speech and life of the unlettered. It is the man who is in touch with things, and not with deadening words; it is the man who learns from the breadth of nature and not from the weak and broken transcript of it in the words of others; it is the man, before writing, who is the master of thought and sight, and the unfailing source from which literature may draw its health and life. And in our own days this resort to the fresh wit and character of the man whose mind is not deadened by literary models has been ever the mainspring of new life. After the Ayrshire ploughman and the recluse of Grasmere, the strongest man for a time was he who drew from unlettered life in England; then peasant life in France gave the new vigor; and, when the Dorset rustic became out of date, Central African savages, Indian wolf-men, and Australian bushrangers have been the desperate resorts of our literature in its search for the needful ground of manin-nature. That ground is being steadily cut away by the growing trust in the power of mere words, and by the habit of learning at second-hand through the minds of others, which is the bane of the modern system, in place of feeding the mind through the senses and forming it by direct touch with the realities of matter, thought, and action.

Now, as it is with the literature of imagination, so it is with the literature

Not only does this masterly power of remembering and reproducing the forms and attitudes of animals show a high ability in the artist, but it points to a far wider appreciation among his fellows. Such work is not habitually done, even by a genius, unless those around him have a keen feeling for the beauty and the truth of it. An artist does not produce cups of Vapheio for a patron who cannot value their quality. The general character of the best class of a people is reflected in the art which is produced to meet their demands and their wishes, even when it results in unlimited portraits of aldermen and babies.

Turning next to more decorative art, the discs of gold which were fastened on to the dresses of the wealthy Mycenæans show a fine sense of ornament. The cuttle fish, with its arms each coiled round into a spiral, is displayed with the restful formality that belongs to decoration as opposed to the activity of motion. In other cases the ornament is wholly geometrical-of spirals coiled in groups, with the free ends looped round in the spaces between the coils. How closely this is akin to the decoration of the bronze age in northern Europe I need hardly remind you. Another link is shown in the wavy band winding around the bosses on one of the gold discs, which will bring to mind the interlacing bandwork of northern art. The effect of bosses was also often used, as in the splendid headband from Mycenæ, where the smooth, bright surfaces are set off by delicate loop patterns around them. And groups of bosses alternate with rosettes in orderly disorder on the great headdress of sheet gold. In every branch of work, whether minute labor of the goldsmith, or delicate carying in rooms, or massive columns, we see the same great faculty of design, the same knowledge of the value of effects, the same free and vigorous fancy. Yet these true artists probably never read or wrote a word in their lives. We see the vigor, the freedom, the skill of his art reflecting the same great qualities that we know in his

mind and perception, as shown by those earliest poems that have fixed for us some aspects of his thought and feelings.

There is another view of an unlettered civilization which we can study better from another field. The details of the possessions and products or daily life are scarcely at all preserved to us from the prehistoric age of Greece. The scanty remains of the towns and palaces have covered hardly anything but stone carvings; and the tombs have contained but few things that belonged to the living. Hence we are almost limited to the insight that we gain from the artistic expression; and, great as that is, it shows us but little of the material civilization. The most complete picture of an unlettered civilization that is preserved to us is transmitted by the figure of the various objects of daily life which were taken by the Egyptians as symbols in their writing. The actual carvings and drawings belong to the earliest stages of the figured expression of ideas, the force and simplicity of many of the emblems startling us by their directness. As no other system of writing went before this, so it is plain that the drawing of an object to show a thought proves that the object must be older than the use of it in writing; and thus in the Egyptian hieroglyphs of the earliest known age we have handed down to us the picture of the civilization which went before, and led up to, the use of writing. First we notice the weapons. The large flint knife grasped by the back is one of the simplest and earliest of tools, both for hunting and for other work. throw stick carved in wood, with the peculiar bends which aid its flight, has also come from the primitive ages; like the emblem for strength, where the outstretched arm grasps a bone, the very rudest means of attack. In these we see some of the beginnings of the arts of life embalmed to our view; but other objects show the later stages side by side with these. The emblem of a follower or personal retainer gives a picture of the wild hunting life on the desert. We now turn to the pictures of

The

The mallet used in the early times is a thick piece of stem somewhat tapered to the hand. The auxiliaries for work are also shown in the hieroglyphs. The sharpening stone bound around with cord was hung by a loop to the girdle.. The bolt for fastening a box or a door was cunningly carved, with a knob to prevent it slipping from its place, and a groove to hold the string for sealing it. The cubit for measuring the work was at first figured as a long bar; but that being confused with other signs the end view of it showing the bevelled edge was adopted. This became the emblem of exactitude, of truth, and of justice. Lastly there is the sledge of wood on which the great stones were drawn from the quarries for all the buildings.

the agricultural life. The primitive fixed to a long handle of bent wood. hoe, made from a forking branch of a tree, was adopted in the writing; but after the very earliest instances we find it improved by three flint blades lashed or to it. But the compound hoe of two pieces of wood, held together by a cord, also appears; and also the development of this into a plough by attaching an animal to the handle to drag it along, while guiding the blade by two prolongations of it. The plough thus evolved, the sickle comes next, imitated from the jaw-bone of an ox. It was carved in a bent piece of wood and armed with a row of flint saws inserted in its edge, in imitation of the animal's teeth. Beside the corn the vine was also cultivated, and is shown held up on forked props with clusters of grapes hanging between, forming the symbol of a vineyard. Rope work played a large part in the details of life. The mat of green rushes bound together by strings was an essential of Egyptian furniture as it is at present. The clap net for fowling and the fishing net with rows of floats and sinkers passed also into the writing, while rope was the handiest means of measurement; and a single bit with the strands frayed out stood for a unit, a curved bit for a ten, and a coil for a hundred. The netting needle was constantly used for making the fishing nets which secure a great part of the food of the Egyptian. A sign which has been hard to understand is shown by variants of it to be a mast and furled sail. To avoid weakening the keel of the boat the mast was not stepped into it, but was forked over it. As it was needful to obtain the greatest stiffness in the middle, two stems were used, one tapering downward to the fork, the other tapering upward to the sail; and they were united by the thick ends in the middle, doubtless as such compound yards are now made in Egypt, by lashings of hide. The sail at the top is furled, and laced over with rope. Beside the mast the oar was also figured, and shows that both sailing and rowing were familiar before these signs were formed. Of tools for woodwork the adze is figured with a blade

Among the ornaments and luxuries of life we meet with the collar, which, as we learn from a very early statue, was the emblem of the high priest of Horus. It is shown as a tied cord in this form on the front of the priest's neck, and as a complete circuit of cord it figures round the names of the kings, to mark their office. Here a priestly decoration has become a royal token; and, as such, is put around the royal names when writing came into use. The necklace of beads was worn to carry a cylinder of stone, capped with gold at either end, which in early Egypt, as in Babylonia, was the seal of office. This necklace and seal became the em blem of a sealbearer or high official, and continued so for thousands of years after cylindrical seals had entirely disappeared from use. The other collar is shown in the best examples to consist of strings of beads and pendants; it became the sign for gold, showing that the precious metal was first used for such ornaments, and was identified with them in common view when writing was being formed. The scribe's implements must of course have come into use after writing was established; but it is remarkable that no sign should have arisen for writing until such an apparatus was in use. We see the long case for the reeds, the little jar for water to grind the ink, and the paint

slab with two holes, one for red, the other for black color. And all is united by a long double cord, by which it was hung over the shoulder, the palette in front, the pen case and jar behind. A very usual sign is the draught board and pieces for playing; showing that the national game was played on a board of three squares by ten, in the days before writing as it was four thousand years later. We now turn to the architecture, of which different stages have been preserved to us in the symbols. The simplest is the hut which served as a shrine for the primitive deity. Two tall poles stood up, one on either side of the doorway. A lintel beam was lashed to them, and that supported the curved roofing branches the ends of which stood forward over the doorway. In front a line of pegs in the ground, lashed together by a cord, served to prevent animals from straying into the sacred space. To this day the material for the villagers' walls is a row of palmsticks planted in the ground, with interwoven cross sticks, and a plastering of mud. The tops of the branches are left unstripped with the dry leaves on them, and they form a hedge on the wall which prevents men or animals from easily passing over it. In this we see the origin of one of the earliest types of building, which is shown as a hieroglyph on the oldest inscribed tomb. The main features of the architecture of Egypt are all there, all derived from the palinstick wall which we see to-day, and all organized before the beginning of writing. Yet another form of primitive construction has survived in decoration. The papyrus stem was a favorite material for building the light skiffs which the Egyptians used on their canals and even on the Nile. On these papyrus boats, cabins, and shelters were built of the same papyrus stems; the long, loose, wiry leaves were tied together in tufts at the top where the crossing stems which formed the cabin roof were lashed to the uprights, and tied above that again to keep them from spreading. Here was a source of a favorite decoration for the tops of walls,

a decoration which became a sign of writing as the emblem for an ornament.

Turning now to the great feature of architecture, the column, we find also that already settled before the rise of writing. The tent-pole column is one of the most elementary signs, that for the idea of "greatness," the long pole being, as all tent-dwellers will remember, the great encumbrance in moving, longer and more in the way than anything else. That this is the tent pole is evident from its pointed bottom, different from any column; and a very early sign for a place of assembly or a festival is the view of a building with the roof propped up in the middle by such a pole. In later times this became the source of a strange form of column, which has never been explained until compared with the primitive tent pole hieroglyph. Another support is derived apparently from the bundle of reeds tied firmly together near the top, and plastered over with the Nile mud. That such a pillar will bear a great weight may be seen by the side of every canal in Egypt. And even more advanced forms were known. The fluted column was familiar, and became the regular sign for the very early city of Heliopolis, probably the earliest city whose origin we can guess at, far older than the Egyptian Monarchy. Such a city would have a sign so soon as writing was begun, and that sign is the sixteen-sided fluted column with a tapering shaft. Thus that form is carried back into the unlettered ages which we cannot hope to touch with any continuous record. And not only was the column used, but also the abacus and the grouping in a portico, as in the sign here copied from one of the earliest tombs that is known. Thus we see that in Egypt all the principal features of architecture, which lived through four thousand years of history, were devised and used by the man before writing. To notice one other part of the mind of man before he adopts a regular system of communication which can be generally understood, let us see what aids to memory are devised. These often re