We should be open to the charge of great presumption, if, with nothing before us but a few engravings by which to guide our judgment, we ventured to offer an opinion opposed to that of Mr Wilson, or of others who have made the subject one of especial study. But opposite to the very page (p. 140, vol. ii.) from which we take this last sentence we have quoted, Mr Wilson gives us an engraving of what are denominated “hieroglyphics.” It appears to us as if the pillar here represented had been divided into compartments, and each compartment had been filled by the artist with some appropriate subject, generally some human figure whose action and attitude are unintelligible to us; but the whole conveys the idea, not of a series of hieroglyphics, but of individual representations, each of which has its own independent meaning. Other engravings, indeed, approximate more nearly to the hieroglyphic; the arbitrary sign is more conspicuous, and there is a more frequent repetition of the same subject; but when we consider the poverty of invention that even in later times afflicts the arts, and the tendency to repeat and to copy which is very noticeable in rude times, we are not surprised that the same subject is often found on the same monument, or that it has spread from Copan to Palenque. There is nothing in the engravings before us, or in the account given of them, which proves that a really hieroglyphic system had been invented; and we cannot but suspect that those who undertake the task of deciphering them will inevitably fail, not because the key cannot be found, but because no key ever existed. Suppose a monument erected or a medal struck in honour of one of our own excellent missionaries; suppose it represented the missionary-standing with one foot on a broken image, or idol, and that by his side knelt some half-naked savage with a cross in his hands—this mixture of picture and of symbol would tell its tale very intelligibly to us, for we have heard before of the labours of the missionary. But suppose this and other pictures of the same kind were handed down to a remote posterity, who had no information except what the pictures themselves conveyed by which to understand them, what hopeless perplexities would they for ever remain! And the use of the repeated symbol might lead to the persuasion that they were composed on some hieroglyphic system. We might imagine learned men toiling for ever over such representation, and never coming to any satisfactory result.