time, an age of simplicity, when man conversed with the beasts of the field, when the earth brought forth her fruits spontaneously, with her bosom as yet unvexed by the ploughshare, ere the knowledge or the discrimination of good and evil had come into the world--the record, in one word, as all these details tend to prove, of a time before man had become a moral being; a dim mysterious recollection, almost like a dream, of a time before the animal nature had been decisively exalted into humanity. Some persons believe, against all probability of evidence, that spoken language was a sudden original inspiration instead of a gradual invention. None, however, assert the right of believing the same thing in regard to letters or written language. The progressive origin of alphabetical signs is admitted on all sides, so that there must have been a time when man had to trust to his fallible memory instead of written memoranda. The growth of picture-writing itself must have been extremely slow, from the difficulty of establishing an agreement as to the meaning of particular representations. What this difficulty amounts to may to some extent be tested any day in a picture-gallery, where all the appliances and skill of modern art are at our service. Without the aid of a descriptive catalogue, it is but seldom that any two accounts of the meaning of the same picture would be found to agree. The art of drawing, it may well be supposed, was not an inspiration. It had to be invented. The very idea of transmitting a record to future ages would only occur with the advance of civilization. The crumbling surface of the rock, the decaying bark of trees, would be the first perishable and soon obliterated manuscripts. Before account could be taken of months and years, astronomy must have made some progress. Before the flow of centuries could be accurately noted, arithmetic must have advanced far beyond the stage at which we still find it among numerous savage nations. An Esquimaux couple, it is said, find it difficult to count their own children, even when they are no more than four or five[45]. From these considerations alone we may feel perfectly certain that numbers of ages elapsed before men acquired the means of recording the duration of time by any definite measurements. Unconsciously and without set purpose, perhaps the very earliest tribes and the most untutored have left behind them traces not only of their existence but of the date and era at which they lived; traces which we are only now beginning to decipher, and to read with faltering lips.