This is a wide and fruitful subject. It is by the aid of this Egyptian discovery of letters, and of letters only, no one other thing beneath the sun being, without it, of any use in this matter, that the better thought, which is the thought of a few, sometimes originally of a single mind only, gains the upper hand of the inferior thought, which is the thought of the many; that error, which naturally commends itself to the ignorant, is slowly and painfully demonstrated to be error; and that many forms of injustice, notwithstanding their hoar antiquity, the memory of man never having run to the contrary, are shown at last to be inhumanities. It is by their aid, and their aid only, that an inch of good ground gained to-day, is not lost to-morrow, but kept for ever; that hints are treasured up till what they hinted at is discovered; that what has been observed by one man is set alongside of what has been observed by another, till at last the fruitful conclusion grows out of the connected view; that the experience of individuals, and of generations, is stored up for those who are to come after; that the spark kindled in a single mind becomes a common light. All this must be despaired of without printed records, statements, and discussions, without books, without newspapers; and the more largely these means for arriving at, and conveying knowledge are used, the greater is the effect of them. If the effect is so much when the seed is sown in ten thousand minds, it will be proportionately greater when it is sown in ten millions. Nothing else has done in this matter for any people, and nothing else will do for the Egyptians and Syrians. Their circumstances, over which we appear to have no control, may make the effort barren; but there is nothing else we can do for them. It is ‘the one way of salvation’ for the state in which they now are. Nothing else can bring them to see except printed discussion, in which what is gained is retained, and what is discredited dies away, that for one disease the dung of a black dog is not a sovereign remedy, nor for another the dung of a white cow; and that the only preservative against the Evil Eye is the security good laws, well administered, give to person and property. As to ourselves, had it not been for the assistance we received from letters we should still have here the Druid, or some one or other of his congeners, offering human holocausts to the accompaniment of the approving shouts of frantic multitudes; and we should still be, at this day, as far from the ideas of liberty of thought, and of humanity, as Galgacus was from the conception of the steam-engine, or of the electric telegraph. * * * * *