We do not imply by this observation that the native Indian would have been incapable of advancing by a slow and natural progression of their own on the road of civilisation: on the contrary, we believe that the civilisation of the Aztecs and the Peruvians may be seen in its earliest stage amongst the Iroquois. But when the European encounters the savage, there is a gap between them which the latter cannot suddenly traverse. The intermediate steps are not presented to him. The time is not given him by which slow-changing habits can be formed and transmitted. He is required to proceed at a faster pace than his savage nature can accomplish. Now, as every generation that has advanced upon its predecessors, transmits, together with its knowledge, some increasing aptitude for the acquisition of such knowledge, there is no difficulty in believing that the savage would be expedited in his career of civilisation as well by an intermixture of race as by a participation of knowledge. The whole chapter of Mr Wilson on the Red Race is well worthy of perusal. The reader will find in it many interesting details, which, of course, our space will not permit us to allude to. We shall conclude our notice by some reference to a topic especially interesting when we speak of the progress of civilisation—namely, the mode of transmitting ideas, the art of writing, or letters. Our author, according to his favourite phraseology, entitles his chapter on this subject ‘The Intellectual Instinct: Letters.’ The origin of language may be open to discussion. Its gradual growth from the wants, the social passions, the organisation, the mimetic and reasoning powers of man, may to many persons seem an unsatisfactory account. But no one disputes that _writing_ is an invention of man. Even if the steps of this invention had not been traced, we should have been unable to frame any other hypothesis with regard to an art possessed by one people and not possessed by another. We may define writing to be the transmission of ideas by visible and permanent signs, instead of by momentary sounds and gestures. The art of writing, it must be remembered, is not complete till the characters upon the paper, or the parchment, or the plaster of the wall, or the graven rock, _interpret themselves_ to one who knows the conventional value of the several signs. So long as any picture-writing or symbolic figures act merely as aids to the memory, in retaining a history of events which is, in fact, transmitted by oral tradition, writing is not yet invented. The picture, however faithful, gives its meaning only to those who know many other facts which are not in the picture itself. When a system of signs has been invented, _by which alone_ the ideas of one person, or one generation, can be communicated to another person or another generation, then the art has been attained, whether those signs are hieroglyphics or alphabetical, whether they are signs of things or signs of words.