_Like Memphian hieroglyphs, to stretch the span Of memory frail in momentary man._ Book II. Line 287. We may reckon three stages of improvement in the graphic art, or the art of communicating our thoughts to absent persons and to posterity by visible signs. First, The invention of _painting ideas,_ or representing actions, dates and other circumstances of historical fact, by the images of material things, drawn usually on a flat surface, or sometimes carved or moulded in a more solid form. This was the state at which the art had arrived in Egypt before the introduction of letters, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Greeks in Egypt called it hieroglyphic. Second, The invention of _painting sounds,_ which we do by the use of letters, or the alphabet, and which we call writing. This was a vast improvement; as it simplified in a wonderful degree the communication of thought. For ideas are infinite in number and variety; while the simple sounds we use to convey them to the ear are few, distinct and easy to be understood. It would indeed be impossible to express all our ideas by distinct and visible images. And even if the writer were able to do this, not many readers could be made to understand him; since it would be necessary that every new idea should have a new image invented and agreed upon between the writer and the reader, before it could be used. Which preliminary could not be settled without the writer should see and converse with the reader. And he might as well, in this case, convey his ideas by oral speech; so that his writing could be of little use beyond a certain routine of established signs. The number of simple sounds in human language, used in discourse, is not above eighteen or twenty; and these are so varied in the succession in which they are uttered, as to express an inconceivable and endless variety of thought and sentiment. Then, by the help of an alphabet of about twenty-six letters or visible signs, these sounds are translated from the ear to the eye; and we are able, by thus painting the sound, to arrest its fleeting nature, render it permanent, and talk with distant nations and future ages, without any previous convention whatever, even supposing them to be ignorant of the language in which we write. This is the present state of the art, as commonly practised in all the countries where an alphabet is used. It is called the art of writing; and to understand it is called reading.