ments of all higher knowledge, and the indispensable elements of intellectual progress.

It is consistent with the very nature of a highly developed written language that the origin of its first germs of uttered expression should be lost among the vague shadows of primeval history, or preserved in mythic embodiment in an ideal Thoth, Cadmus, or Mercury. The discovery of letters approaches, indeed, so near to the divine gift of speech that Plutarch tells us in his De Iside et Osiride, when Thoth, the god of letters, first appeared on the earth, the inhabitants of Egypt had no language, but only uttered the cries of animals. They had, at least, no language with which to speak to other generations; and hence Bacon, passing in his reasoning beyond "that wherein man excelleth beasts" to that immortality whereunto man's nature doth aspire, exclaims: If the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits: how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?" But it is not altogether to be ascribed to the forgetfulness by later generations of the benefactor to whom so great a gift as letters was due, that the origin of writing is obscurely symbolized in mythic characters. The Egyptian Thoth was in reality no deified mortal, but the embodiment of an intellectual triumph slowly achieved by the combined labours of many generations, and the successive steps in the progress of which can still be discerned. The origin of the hieroglyphics of Egypt is clearly traceable to the simplest and rudest form of picture-writing, the literal figuring of the objects de

1

1 Advancement of Learning.

lation. By means of cranial and other physiological evidence, it has been maintained that the type of red man of the New World, from the Arctic circle to the Straits of Magellan, is so slightly varied, that, as Morton and Agassiz unite in affirming, "All the Indians constitute but one race, from one end of the continent to the other." The crania of the ancient graves are full of interest for us, and their revelations are considered in a subsequent chapter. But here, meanwhile, by means of the ingenious portraitures of the Peruvian potter's art,

we find in the sepulchre, along with the fleshless skull, the sacred urn, which preserves for us the living features, the costume, and the familiar habits of the dead; and these features are neither those of the forest Indian, nor of the semi-civilized Mexican, but national features, as replete with a character of their own, as the fictile ware

1 Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 14.

which supplies such valuable illustrations of the generations of an ancient and unknown past. One of those Peruvian drinking-vessels, of unusual beauty, from the Beckford Collection (Fig. 41), is placed by Mr. Marryat alongside of a beautiful Greek vessel of similar design, from the Museo Borbonico, Naples, without its greatly suffering by the comparison. In this Peruvian vessel, there is an individuality of character in the head at once suggestive of portraiture; and of the perfection to which the imitative arts had been carried by the ancient workmen, in the modelling perchance of some favourite inca, prince, or noble. A selection of portrait-vases is grouped together in Fig. 42, derived from various sources,

but all illustrating a diversity of physiognomy in which we look in vain for the familiar characteristics of the Indian countenance, with its high cheek-bones, its peculiar form of mouth, and strongly-marked salient nose. The group, ranging from left to right, includes a small Mexican vase of unglazed red ware, in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia; an ancient portrait vase of the Quichuas of Bolivia, from D'Orbigny's L'Homme Américain; another of inferior workmanship, in the cabinet of the Historical Society of New York. This was brought from Berue, and re

presents apparently a female with a close-fitting cap, and the hair gathered up under it behind. The next, from the collection of Dr. E. H. Davis, is a Peruvian drinking-vessel, with crested helmet or head-dress, and ear pendants such as are frequently introduced in the small Mexican terra-cottas. The vase on the right hand, brought by Colonel Thorpe from Mexico, includes a group of comic masks designed with great spirit.

Grotesque

One sin

and humorous designs are by no means rare. gular example figured by D'Orbigny, presents a grotesque pitcher, in which, though the face is human, the nether limbs appear rather to belong to the quadrumanous monkey; but the monkey is a frequent subject both of the American sculptors' and potters' art. At Copan, Stephens was first rewarded with a glimpse of architectural remains, which clearly told of extinct arts and an obliterated civilisation of native growth, and awoke in his mind an interest stronger than he had felt when wandering among the ruins of Egypt, or exploring the strange architecture of the long-lost Petra. Following his Indian guide with hope rather than expectation of finding remains of a higher character than the combined labours of the forest-tribes were capable of producing, he suddenly found himself arrested amid the dense forest by a squared stone-column about fourteen feet high, sculptured in bold relief on every side. "The front," he says, "was the figure of a man curiously and richly dressed; and the face, evidently a portrait, solemn, stern, and well fitted to excite terror." In this, as in all the other portrait-sculptures, carefully drawn by Catherwood in Central America and Yucatan, we look in vain for the Indian features, which, according to the deductions of the native school of American ethnologists, ought to be found as surely in such ancient portraits, as the universal type of American cranium was affirmed