At other periods we find trees were planted, heaps of stones, altars or pillars, as we read in sacred history, were erected; and even games and festivals ordered, to keep up the recollection of important facts. Since, however, the art of writing was invented (be the period when it may), various materials have from time to time been made use of, for the purpose of transmitting to posterity the discoveries and deeds of their ancestors. Thus, for instance, the most ancient remains of writing which have been handed down to us, are upon hard substances, such as bricks, stones, and metals, which were used by the ancients for all matters of public notoriety; abundant proofs of which we have in the recent discoveries of Mr. Layard. And Josephus, in the third chapter of the first book of Jewish Antiquities, tells us: that, “the descendants of Seth, leading a happy and quiet life, found out by study and observation the motions and distribution, or order, of the heavenly bodies; and, that their discoveries might not be lost to men (knowing that the destruction of the world had been foretold by Adam, which should be once by fire, and once by water,) they made two pillars—one of brick, and the other of stone, and wrote or engraved their discoveries thereon; so that if the rains should destroy that of brick, the other of stone might continue to show mankind their observations.” In the sacred text we are further informed, that great stones were directed to be set up by the children of Israel, after the passage of the Jordan, and being “plastered with plaster,”—which appears to have been a very common practice—“thereon were to be written all the words of the law very plainly.” In the book of Job, which some suppose to have been written by Moses, we have an obscure intimation of the method employed in registering upon the rock, “graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever.” But, although there is apparently a want of clearness in our translation of the passage, by no means does it affect the idea of Job’s desire to give the greatest possible permanence to the words he then uttered. He exclaims, “Oh that my words were now written,” or, (though probably not an exact translation,) “Oh that they were printed in a book;” and more (he adds) “that they were even graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever;” which latter clause some take to be in reference to the leaden tablets which are found to have been in very early use. But I rather favour the interpretation, for which I am indebted, to my much esteemed friend the Rev. Dr. Croly; that as a still more indelible and effectual mode of perpetuating his thoughts, it was Job’s conception that his words should be graven in the rock with an iron pen, or tool, and the interstices afterwards filled with lead, in order that the contrast occasioned thereby might render them the more readily intelligible to those who happened to travel that way.