that, in their more antique forms, the hieroglyphs were employed for the ordinary affairs of life.[1] The very few ideographic resemblances of Chinese and cuneiform afford little ground for comparison. The exclusive use of the wedge-shape is of itself a radical distinction.[2] The Chinese signs have been connected even with the Mexican, which have apparently more affinity with the picture-writings of Indian tribes. More marvellous still are the Christian antitypes traced by the Jesuit fathers in these old mysteries of the illumined pagans of Cathay. Fouquet treated the whole Shi-king as symbolical of the life of Christ, and even found the cross and nails figured in the signs. Cibot classified them in the same interest as dogmatic, ecclesiastical, typical, and prophetic. Amyot found the Trinity in the triangular sign for union, and Lucifer in that for evil, composed of two figures, meaning "lifted up" and "novelty;" a compound of mouth, eight, and a vessel referred to the number of persons in the ark; "to show" and "trees" meant the Adamitic trees of knowledge and life; "death" and a "woman" was an allusion to the sin of Eve. All this typical writing was of course invented (or revealed) before this Deluge, and transmitted by Noah and his sons direct to Egypt and China. The assured belief of the author is disturbed only by the fear that his theory will be assailed on the ground of the "confusion of tongues;" but not at all by any suspicion that the ideograph is too natural a form of primitive writing to require being traced to one centre for mankind, even though that centre be the all-sufficient family of "Noe."
Our chief interest is to trace the finer aesthetic element that characterizes this art of expression by written signs in
