The letters served as ciphers, and to express musical notes. Judge what an infinity of useful knowledge must thus have been produced. A, b, c, d, e, f, g, were the seven heavens; the harmony of the celestial spheres was composed of the seven first letters; and an acrostic accounted for everything among the ever venerable Ancients. A, B, C, OR ALPHABET. Why has not the alphabet a name in any European language? _Alphabet_ signifies nothing more than _A_, _B_, and _A_, _B_, signifies nothing, or but indicates two sounds, which two sounds have no relation to each other. _Beta_ is not formed from _alpha_; one is first, the other is second, and no one knows why. How can it have happened that terms are still wanting to express the portal of all the sciences? The knowledge of numbers, the art of numeration, is not called the _one-two_; yet the first rudiment of the art of expressing our thoughts has not in all Europe obtained a proper designation. The alphabet is the first part of grammar; perhaps those who are acquainted with Arabic, of which I have not the slightest notion, can inform me whether that language, which is said to contain no fewer than eighty words to express a _horse_, has _one_ which signifies the _alphabet_. I protest that I know no more of Chinese than of Arabic, but I have read, in a small Chinese vocabulary, that this nation has always had two words to express the catalogue or list of the characters of its language: one is _ko-tou_, the other _hai-pien_; we have neither _ko-tou_ nor _hai-pien_ in our Occidental tongues. The Greeks, who were no more adroit than ourselves, also said _alphabet_. Seneca, the philosopher, used the Greek phrase to designate an old man who, like me, asks questions on grammar, calling him _Skedon analphabetos_. Now the Greeks had this same alphabet from the Phœnicians--from that people called _the letter nation_ by the Hebrews themselves, when the latter, at so late a period, went to settle in their neighborhood. It may well be supposed that the Phœnicians, by communicating their characters to the Greeks, rendered them a great service in delivering them from the embarrassment occasioned by the Egyptian mode of writing taught them by Cecrops. The Phœnicians, in the capacity of merchants, sought to make everything easy of comprehension; while the Egyptians, in their capacity of interpreters of the gods, strove to make everything difficult. I can imagine I hear a Phœnician merchant landed in Achaia saying to a Greek correspondent: "Our characters are not only easy to write, and communicate the thoughts as well as the sound of the voice; they also express our respective debts. My _aleph_, which you choose to pronounce _alpha_, stands for an ounce of silver, _beta_ for two ounces, _tau_ for a hundred, _sigma_ for two hundred. I owe you two hundred ounces; I pay you a _tau_, and still owe you another _tau_; thus we shall soon make our reckoning."