The age in which literature was disseminated and preserved extended from the time of the earliest intellectual compositions designed for communication--as the papyri hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt and the leather and parchment rolls of the early Persian and Jewish peoples; and included also those compositions which had a limited circulating character, like the tablets and cylinders of ancient Assyria--down to the time when the printing-press was invented. This, inclusively, is the period of the manuscript literature. Throughout this entire period of the world's ongoing, for many hundreds or some thousands of years, each and every kind of production, whether in hieroglyph, cuneiform, or alphabetic characters, was made by itself--the producer inscribing, painting, or printing (letter by letter or character by character) through hundreds and thousands of pages. "To the time of the invention of printing, and until the printed book had driven it out of the field, the manuscript was the vehicle for the conservation and dissemination of literature and discharges the function of a printed book." A _book_ has been defined as "any record of thought in words." This may be a correct definition as far as it relates to literature but not as it relates to the "record of thought." There is a "record of thought" independent of words and, perhaps, long antedating the record in words of any language. A _word_ has been defined as "the sign of an idea." But were there not "ideas" long before they were communicated by words? If there are "songs without words" may there not be, or, at least may there not have been, "ideas without words"? An affirmative answer is admirably illustrated--and the illustration is confirmatory--by a group of six great mural paintings by Mr. John W. Alexander, in the Library of Congress at Washington. These pictures illustrate historically the probable genesis and evolution of the "book." The first painting is of the rude _Cairn_ or heap of stones piled up on the seashore or elsewhere by prehistoric man in order to commemorate some event or achievement, and thus to stand as a "record" or landmark of a fact or truth. The second picture is illustrative of _Oral Tradition_, and represents the "narration" of facts or doings by the word of mouth. The third is called the _Pictograph_ which consists in delineations of events or experiences as drawn by some implement upon the surface of skins, or on the leaves or bark of trees or plants, and by means of which there was created a kind of permanent "record" of past "happenings" or doings. The fourth is the _Hieroglyphics_--which brings us to the historic period--in which there were carved on the face of cliffs, on the walls of structures of any kind, or on wood, the pictured and, may be, progressive delineations of events or ideas. The fifth is the _Manuscripts_ or the record contained in written language and which was phonetic, syllabic, or alphabetic,--the end