After all, if we do not connect letters one to the other, as in running handwriting, does it make much difference whether we set the separate letters down in a sequence which begins at the right and ends at the left, or in one that begins at the left and ends at the right? Some nations, like the Chinese and Tartars, find it convenient to write signs _under_ each other. The Egyptians used to write in at least three several directions, namely, downwards, from right to left, and from left to right. Generally one can tell how to read hieroglyphs in Egyptian and Mexican manuscripts by noting the direction of the faces of animals and persons pictured, and then reading in the opposite direction. Sometimes Egyptian hieroglyphs were engraved one upon the other, like a monogram. Well, putting some or all of these facts together, it suddenly flashed on some one that the oldest Greek letters might be nothing more or less than the Phoenician letters turned the other way. And when they came to examine the very oldest Greek inscriptions to be found, they discovered that this was the main difference between the two! The Greeks had borrowed the Phoenician letters and merely added some new characters to express sounds peculiar to their own tongue and neglected others that were of no service. It was this alphabet that the Greek-Phoenicians brought to Italy. When, centuries later, Latins and Sabines and Etruscans and Oscans, banded together and formed the great city of Rome, it was this alphabet they inherited from their forefathers. Several of the letters which the Etruscans thought necessary to express sounds in their language, were dropped before the Romans came to power and produced their great poets and essayists. So, now you know how the alphabet came to you, which the Irish monks taught our heathen forefathers. It came through the Latins from the people of Boeotia, or Greeks, who learned it from the Phoenicians.