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London, England, 1831-06-21 00:00:00

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LITERATUNE AND SCIENCE.

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An Enquiry into the Natural Ilistory, Chemical Proper.
firs, and Medical Virtues, of the Rock Oil, or Green
Mineral Naphtha, of *abatises. By C. B. WrLux-
DON, M.D. BATH, F.O.S. Lownow. Price 20.
Barbndoes Mineral Naphtha, or native green
oil has long been known to the world and recog-
nised in medical practice; but, owing to a semi-
barbarous fiscal regulation, it has been unattainable
till Mr. Caldecot, the proprietor of the estate,
lately procured a remission of the duties. Dr.
Wilkinson, of Bath, has in consequence bestowed
epecial attention to it, and the extracts we gave
yesterday is the result. We shall not anticipate,
the facts there extracted; and it is merely neces-
sary for us to state that the high respectability of
tl.e parties, and the long established reputation of
this natural compound, render what has been done
to secure, supply, and diffuse information, a be-
nait which the faculty and the public will ap-
preciate.
INVENTION OFl.ffrar, BY MR. JAMES
MONTGOMERY.
When, where, and by whom, letters were in-
vented, it ib now in vain to imagine. Notwith
standing the pretensions of Hermes Trismegistos,
Memnon, Cadmus, and others, the true history,
nay even the personal existence of these supposed
claimants, must be ascertained before the unappro-
priated honour can be conceded to any one of
them.

It may, meanwhile, be affirmed as one of those
-circumstances humbling to human pridc that oc-
casionally occur in history, and which, while they
strangely stir the imagination, awaken sublime
but melancholy reflection in minds given to muse
upon the vanity and mortality of all the things
that are done under the sun—it may be affirmed,
as one of these humbling circumstances, that the
man who conquered the greatest trophy ever won
from fate and oblivion, lost his own name, after
divulging the secret by which others might immor-
talize theirs. As a figure of speech one may be'
allowed to wish that the first letters in which he
wrote that name, whether with a pen of iron on
granite, or with his finger on sand—had remained
indelible. But his own invention is his monument,
which, like the undated and uninscribed pyramid,
will remain a wonder and a riddle to the end of the
world.

It is allowed, I believe, on all hands, that the
Egyptians, from time whereof the memory of man
knoweth not to the contrary, possessed three kinds
of writing—hieroglyphical, alphabetical, and pro-
bably, as a link between. logographic, of which
latter the Chinese is the only surviving example at
this day. Indeed, in all countries where society
has emerged from the stagnation of barbarism, and
has made but little advance towards civilization,
there have been found evidences of attempts to
create a language for the eye, either by
figures of things, by arbitrary symbols of
words, or, in the most perfect manner, by
the systematic combination of lines forming letters
to represent the rudiments of sounds.
It has been observed that the Egyptians were in
possession of three kinds of letters. if, indeed, by
letters three kinds of learning be not typified ; for
Pythagoras, it is said, as a special favor rarely
granted to a stranger, was initiated in these triple
mysteries of writing. The hieroglyphic mode was
unquestionably the first, but between it and the
literal the affinity is so remote that the leap over
the whole space could scarcely have been taken at
once, especially as there is an intervening step so
okiviously connected with each, and connecting them
with one another, that it seems almost necessary
for invention to have rested, at least for a while,
upon it. When the ambiguity and imperfection of
hieroglyphics were felt to be irremediable, the first
practical scheme which would suggest itself to the
.mind, which conceived the happy idea of designa-
ting vocal sounds by strokes, iu themselves without
meaning, would be to invent a separate mark for
every word ; but, as all the easy forms would soon
be exhausted, it might next occur to make these
elementary, and adapt them, not to individual
words, but to the most common simple sounds of
which words were composed. Thus monosyllables
would have a single mark ; dissyllables two joined
together ; and polysyllables more or less, according
to their audible divisions.

That the art of writing was practised in Egypt
before the emancipation of the Israelites, appears
almost certain from their frequent and familiar
Mention of this mode of keeping memorials. When
the people had provoked the LORD to wrath, by
making and worshipping the golden calf, Moses
interceding in their behalf says, " Yet now, if
Thou wilt forgive their sin ;—and if not, blot me,
I pray thee, out of thy book which thou halt writ-
ten. And the Loan said unto. Moses, whosoever
ainneth, him will I blot out of my book." The
allusion here is to a table of genealogy, the mus-
ter-roll of an army, a register of citizenship, or
even to those books of chronicles, which were kept
by order of ancient oriental princes, of the events
of their reigns, for reference and remembrance.
Besides, such a mode of publishing important do-
cuments is alluded to, not merely as nothing
new, but-as if even the common people were prac-
tically acquainted with it. " Aud thou shalt bind
them (the statutes and testimonies of the Loan) as
a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as front-
lets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them
upon the poets of thine house, and upon all thy
gates." There are various parallel passages which
no cavilling of commentators can convert from
plain meaning into paradox.
But not the Egyptians and Hebrews alone pos.
seised this invaluable knowledge, at the time of
which we speak (from fourteen to seventeen bun-
dred years before CUBIST.) we have direct and
incidental testimony, both in sacred and profane
history, that the Phcenicians, Arabians, and Chi-
deans, were instructed in the same. The book of
Job (whoever might be the author) lays the scene
and the season of his affliction about this era, and
in the north of Arabia. That extraordinary con-
position—extraordinary indeed, whether it be re-
garded as an historical, dramatic, or poetic per-
formance—contains more curious and minute in-
formation concerning the manners and customs, the
literature and philosophy, the state of arts and
sciences, during the patriarchal ages. than can
be collected in scattered hint,' from all later
works put together. •In reference to the art
and the materials of writing then in use, we
following sublime and affecting
it my words were now writ-
were printed (impreised "oi
! That they were graven
and laid, in the rock for ever !"

The latter aspiration probably alludes to the very
ancient pratitice of hewing characters into the faces
of vast rocks, as eternal memorials of persons and
events. It is said by travellers, whose testimony
seems worthy of credence, that various fragments
of such inscriptions, now utterly undecyphemble,
may be seen to this day in the wildernesses of
Arabia Petrea—monuments at once of the grasp li
and the limitation of the mental power of man ;
thus making the hardest substances in nature the
depositories of his thoughts, and yet betrayed in
his ambitious expectation of so perpetuating' them.
The slow influences of the elements have been in-
cessantly, though insensibly, obliterating what the
chisel had ploughed into the solid marble, till at
length nothing remains but a mockery of skeleton
letters, so unlike their pristine forms, so unable to
explain their own meaning, that you might as well
seek among the human relics in a charnel-vault
the resemblances of the once-living personages,—
or invoke the dead bones to tell their own history,
—as question these dumb rocks concerning the
records engraven on them.
The passage just quoted shows the state of al-
phabetical writing in the age of Job, and, accord-
ing to the best commentators, he describes three
modes of exercising it : " 0 that my words were
now written,—traced out in characters —in a book
composed of palm-leaves or on a roll Of linen ! 0
that they were erigraven with a pen of iron on tab-
lets of lead, or indented in the solid rock to endure
to the end of time ! "—Metropolitan.

•„,• We might infer from this passage that Job, if not a
hero of Arabian poetry, lived after Hermes or Memnon,
whose period is fixed at about 1800 B.C. or 180 after Abra.
ham. Moses died in 1451 ; and Cadmus, who introduced
letters into Greece, built Thebes in 1483. There is there.
fore no difficulty in believing that Moses at least laid the
basis of the Pentateuch, thoneh the anachronisms may have
been introduced by the Editor Eadras. We have inquired
of Ramohun Roy how the Hindoos recorded their celestial
observations so early as 3100 B.C. and which modern astro-
nomy has so exactly verified

THE PESTALOZZIAN PLAN OF EDUCATION.
The plan of education devised by Pestalozzi, and
matured by himself and his coadjutors, does not
appear to be thoroughly understood in England.
Those who hare professed to adopt his method
seem to go no further than his system of tuition—
that is, the mechanical part of Pestalozzi's plan ;
whereas, his scope was much more comprehensive ;
lie contemplated, to use his somewhat pompous
linguage, " a fundamental reform in the march of
human civilization." The mode of teaching and
the principles of scholastic discipline were, with
Pestalozzi, matters subordinate to his grand object
of making the human race not merely more know-
ing, but better than at present.
With tbe view of familiarizing the British public
with the whole theory and practice of the Pests-
lozzian system, Dr. E. Biber, one of his disciples,
has published an account of the life and writings
of Pestalozzi, with copious extracts from his works,
and extensive details illustrative of the practical
parts of his method. Leaving out of view, the
'didactic parts of the work, we can venture to say
that there is a fund of interest in the curious bio-
graphy of the singularand benevolent author of the
plan.
Henry Pestalozzi, or Pestalutz, a Swiss, born
at Zurich in 1745, and left an orphan in indifferent
circumstances, soon developed a peculiarity of
character, which gained him the name of Harry
Oddity. Of an amiable and philanthropic temper,
he frequently meditated upon the existing frame-
work of society, and especially upon the depres-
sion of the poorer classes; and the result of his
reflections was a determination not to aim at a vio-
lent dissolution of the order of things, but to endea-
vour to bring about a gradual amelioration of the
social system by the means of education, convinced
that tbe then prevailing mode of popular instruc-
tion was not calculated to fit mankind for the dis-
charge of their duties in after-life. He traced the
ruin of nations to the degradation of their cha-
racter, and this degradation to the neglect of the
infant in the cradle.

His first experiment was to form an orphan asy-
lum in his own house, where about 50 pauper chil-
dren, taken from the very dregs of the people,
were provided with food, clothing, and instruction.
He was convinced that pauperism and vice were
augmented by extensive relief funds and police re-
gulations ; that the improvement of the lower
orders required an iuternalatimulus to be awakened
in their own breast; that no correction would make
them good, and no support happy, unless there
was a determination on their part to be good and
happy.
The failure of this experiment seems to have
arisen not from any error in his views or principles,
but from want of adequate funds, want of economy,
and want of experience of human nature. Time
suppled the latter defect, and at a subsequent pe-
riod Pestalozzi had the satisfaction of developing
his plan upon a much larger scale, and of attracting
to him individuals who devoted themselves with
like ardour and disinterestedness with himself, to
a reform of the system of education.
Few men could be so well adapted as Pestalozzi
for accomplishing an object like this. His sere-
nity and cheerfulness of temper, his kind and ge-
nerous disposition, his indefatigable attention to
his children, ..to whom he was all in all, as their
circle was an universe to hint, won the affections
of his pupils to such a degree, that they cheerfully
submitted to his plastic hand. " Never," says his
biographer, " perhaps, has the idea of domestic
life, in the highest sense of the word, been more
beautifully realized,--never the effect of a Chris-
tian family spirit more powerfully illustrated,
than it -was in the flourishing times cf the esta-
blishment at Yverdon, in which persons of all ages,
of all ranks, ef all nations, of the most different
gifts and abilities, and of the most opposite cha-
racters, were united together by that unaffected
love which Pestalozzi—in years a man verging to
the grave, but in heart and mind a genuine child—
seemed to breathe out continually, and to impart
to all that came within his circle."

Experience, observation, and reflection, of othera
as weli as himself, enabled him to rectify his errors,
stature and enlarge his plans, and adjust his theory,
as it appears in his writings; which, though some-
what tainted with the mysticism and false meta-
physics of Germany, breathe a spirit of most be-
nevolent philanthropy.
No reformer was ever actuated by parer and
more virtuous motives than Pestalossi. Up to
the latest period of his life, *hen flattery instilled
a little vanity into his mind, " self was the only
'being Seemed forgot." Such was the character
of Pestaloni : it imparts no slight recommend*.
thin to his scheme.

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