undoubtedly presented his conclusions a little in advance of Champollion. Each had arrived at his results quite independently of the other, but, from the first, Champollion’s were the more correct, and what with Young remained a splendid but incomplete exploit of the most magnificent sagacity, was by the Frenchman prosecuted in the most brilliant manner, and reduced to a correct system which, taken as a whole, is still valid at the present day. The great master-pieces of Champollion, the _Grammaire égyptienne_, (1836-41), and the _Dictionnaire égyptien en écriture hiéroglyphique_, (1842-44), were first published after his death (1832), and subsequently to Lepsius’ sojourn in Paris. They give an idea of the profound insight into the ancient Egyptian language which had been attained by this scholar who died so young. Had Fate granted him a longer life his great works would have gained immensely in value, for his brother, Champollion-Figeac, who had undertaken to edit a portion of the manuscripts[15] of the deceased, which filled two thousand pages, although he fulfilled the task conscientiously and gladly, was yet obliged to take in hand much that was only half completed, and did not prove entirely equal to the undertaking. It is true that François Champollion, in his _Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens_, (Paris, 1824), had presented a scheme of the hieroglyphic system of writing which, in its general features, was correct. But this work, though extraordinary for that time, was somewhat of the nature of a sketch, and criticism could find in it sufficient grounds for entertaining sundry doubts and scruples. Other scholars especially, who likewise styled themselves Egyptologists, attacked the system of Champollion, and brought forward other systems of their own in opposition to it. Amongst these guides to the labyrinth, whose errors have long since been refuted and lapsed into utter forgetfulness, Seyffarth of Leipsic lifted his voice most loudly. Sickler, also, wished to explain the hieroglyphics by paranomasia. He maintained that each one was intended to represent a whole series of words of similar sound. Klaproth adhered firmly to his acrological system, according to which each hieroglyphic could express all those Coptic words that begin with the same sound with which the name of the hieroglyphic begins. What was a critically trained linguist to think of a science which had not yet positively decided how to read or explain the characters of that writing, which it was incumbent upon it to interpret, and which could not even declare, with the concurrence of all its collaborators, what language was the basis of the text which it nevertheless sought to translate and expound?