the triumphs of the god-king, the submission of his subjects, and the punishment of the rebellious.  And yet again they were governmental, as being the products of an art reverenced by the people as a sacred mystery.  From the habitual use of this pictorial representations there naturally grew up the but slightly-modified practice of picture-writing—­a practice which was found still extant among the Mexicans at the time they were discovered.  By abbreviations analogous to those still going on in our own written and spoken language, the most familiar of these pictured figures were successively simplified; and ultimately there grew up a system of symbols, most of which had but a distant resemblance to the things for which they stood.  The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially differentiated into the kuriological or imitative, and the tropical or symbolic:  which were, however, used together in the same record.  In Egypt, written language underwent a further differentiation:  whence resulted the hieratic and the epistolographic or enchorial:  both of which are derived from the original hieroglyphic.  At the same time we find that for the expression of proper names which could not be otherwise conveyed, phonetic symbols were employed; and though it is alleged that the Egyptians never actually achieved complete alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be doubted that these phonetic symbols occasionally used in aid of their ideographic ones, were the germs out of which alphabetic writing grew.  Once having become separate from hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing itself underwent numerous differentiations—­multiplied alphabets were produced; between most of which, however, more or less connection can still be traced.  And in each civilised nation there has now grown up, for the representation of one set of sounds, several sets of written signs used for distinct purposes.  Finally, through a yet more important differentiation came printing; which, uniform in kind as it was at first, has since become multiform.

While written language was passing through its earlier stages of development, the mural decoration which formed its root was being differentiated into Painting and Sculpture.  The gods, kings, men, and animals represented, were originally marked by indented outlines and coloured.  In most cases these outlines were of such depth, and the object they circumscribed so far rounded and marked out in its leading parts, as to form a species of work intermediate between intaglio and bas-relief.  In other cases we see an advance upon this:  the raised spaces between the figures being chiselled off, and the figures themselves appropriately tinted, a painted bas-relief was produced.  The restored Assyrian architecture at Sydenham exhibits