These considerations, we repeat, are well adapted to promote the important object to which we have alluded, of causing our institutions to be properly appreciated and loved by ourselves. This is the great desideratum with respect to them—the chief thing necessary for their preservation. Our situation now is more enviable than that of any country of the earth; and all which is requisite is, that we should be aware of our own happiness, and rightly understand the source from which it springs—the republican form of government. Let us be thoroughly impressed with the conviction of the superior efficacy of this system over every other, in promoting the end for which political societies were instituted, and we are safe. We will then be furnished with the best defence against the principal enemy from which danger need be dreaded,—we mean that propensity to change, which is one of the common infirmities of the human breast,—that restlessness which renders the life of man a scene of constant struggle, tends to prevent him from estimating and enjoying the blessings he possesses, and often causes him to dash away with his own rash hand, the cup of happiness from his lips. "Our complexion," says Burke, "is such, that we are palled with enjoyment, and stimulated with hope,—that we become less sensible to a long-possessed benefit, from the very circumstance that it is become habitual. Specious, untried, ambiguous prospects of new advantage, recommend themselves to the spirit of adventure, which more or less prevails in every mind. From this temper, men and factions, and nations too, have sacrificed the good of which they had been in assured possession, in favour of wild and irrational expectations." To be satisfied, is, indeed, we fear, difficult for human nature, even where there is no good to be reached beyond what we already have obtained. A great object, in such case, is to be convinced that there is no such good to be acquired—to suppose that we have arrived at the utmost boundaries of mortal felicity.
Nothing, however, that we have advanced as fitted to aid that object, inasmuch as it respects our political condition, is of such influence for its accomplishment, as the contemplation of the actual state of the European world. When the tempest howls without, the domestic hearth is invested with a doubly inviting aspect; we gather round it with eagerness, in proportion to the dismal appearance of external nature, and bless it for the security which it affords from the rage of the heavens. Should we not, in like manner, embrace with redoubled fondness, the institutions which maintain us in prosperity and peace, now, especially, whilst we are enabled to behold the fearful operation of the consequences of monarchical rule—the horrors in which they are involving the fairest and most civilized portions of the globe; and when we know, too, that the motive which inspired the inhabitants of those countries with courage to encounter the storm, by which they are tossed about on the sea of revolution, was the hope of being driven by it into some haven like that which shelters us from the fury of winds and waves? When, if ever, they will attain to the possession of the blessings which we enjoy,—how all the troubles by which they are agitated will end, is what no human ken is competent to discern; but the philanthropist and the Christian need never despair. Out of chaos came this beautiful world; and the same Being who called it into existence, still watches over its concerns,—is still as potent to convert obscurity into brightness, as when He first said, "Let there be light," and there was light!
Art. III.—Essay on the Hieroglyphic System of M. Champollion, Jr. and the advantages which it offers to sacred criticism. By J. G. H. Greppo, Vicar-General of Belley. Translated from the French by Isaac Stuart, with notes and illustrations. Boston: pp. 276.
In former numbers of this journal, there are several articles devoted to the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphics, particularly as connected with the labours of Mons. Champollion. Every day seems to give opportunity of additional observation, by furnishing new and interesting facts. How much further the investigations may be carried, it would be unsafe even to conjecture; but, in the present state of things, we are fully authorized to consider the problem of hieroglyphics as at last solved, and such general principles established, as must render subsequent investigations comparatively easy. Every age seems to be productive of some great genius peculiarly adapted to the accomplishment of some great design, connected either with the advancement of learning, or the melioration of the moral condition of mankind. The present appears fruitful of great men, and France, particularly favoured, whether we regard the great political events which have called out the most gigantic exhibitions of practical wisdom, or look at the onward march of science, which seems in no wise impeded, by convulsions which scatter every thing but science, like the yellow leaves of autumn. Let us not, however, be diverted from our object,—the sober investigation of a sober subject, alike deeply interesting to the philologer, the student of history, and the inquirer into the sacred truths connected with divine revelation.
The work which stands at the head of this article, purports to be an investigation of the hieroglyphic system developed in the published works of Mons. Champollion, Jr. and the advantage which it offers to sacred criticism. It is the performance of a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, J. G. H. Greppo, Vicar-General of Belley. The original work, however, is not before us. We examine it through the medium of a translation made by Mr. Isaac Stuart, son of the Rev. Moses Stuart, one of the most eminent scholars of our country, who vouches for the accuracy of the translation, having inspected the whole, and compared it with the original. Dr. Stuart has added some notes, where he has seen occasion to differ from Mr. Greppo, on some points of Hebrew philology and criticism. The reasons for his difference of opinion are given with that candour for which the writer is distinguished, and the intelligent reader is left to judge as to the merits of the question.
It is well known to the learned, that Mons. Champollion, the younger, has been spending several years in the uninterrupted study of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. In his capacity of Professor of History at Grenoble, he found his labours embarrassed by the immense hiatus which occurs in Egyptian history, and, to the filling up of this, he set himself to work with all the zeal and energy which genius could inspire. In this work, he had the advantage of youth, and a very superior education in the Coptic and other oriental languages, connected with a patience of investigation, which appears almost miraculous. He had the advantage of knowing, moreover, that, if ever any just conclusion was to be gained, he must seek it by getting some starting point, different from that whence all his predecessors had set out. There had been a variety of learned men whose investigations were directed to this point, such as Father Kircher the Jesuit, whose different works on Egyptian antiquities had been successively published in Rome, from 1636 to 1652—Warburton, the highly gifted author of the Divine Legation of Moses, the learned Count de Gebelin, and others of equal and less name. But these had all confessedly failed, and the learned almost gave up the subject in despair, so much so, that Champollion himself, states it as the only opinion which appeared to be well established among them, viz. "that it was impossible ever to acquire that knowledge which had hitherto been sought with great labour, and in vain."
In the midst of these discouragements, a circumstance occurred, familiar probably to our readers, but to which we allude merely to observe, that it seemed at once to open a new era of investigation, and is among the many evidences of the fact, that events of apparently the most inconsiderable description, are connected with results whose magnitude cannot be estimated. At the close of the last century, while the French troops were engaged in the prosecution of the war in Egypt, it is well known, that a number of learned men were associated with the expedition, for the prosecution of purposes far more honourable than those of human conquest,—we mean the exploration of a hitherto sealed country, with the express design of advancing the arts and sciences. One division of the army occupied the village of Raschid, otherwise called Rosetta; and, while they were employed in digging the foundation for a fort, they found a block of black basalt, in a mutilated condition, bearing a portion of three inscriptions, one of which was in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The fate of the military expedition, lost to the French the possession of this stone, as it fell into the hands of the British, by the capitulation of Alexandria; it was afterward conveyed to London, and placed in the British museum. Previously to the termination of the war, however, the stone and its characters had been correctly delineated by the artists connected with the commission, and then, through the medium of an engraving, placed in possession of the learned. This is a brief history of the Rosetta stone, as it is called, but still it baffled the investigations of the learned. They had gone upon the supposition, that the hieroglyphic method of writing must, of necessity, be ideographic, i. e. figurative or symbolical, and that each of these signs was the expression of an idea. Here appears to have been the great root of all their mistakes on the subject, mistakes naturally fallen into by the moderns, inasmuch as the few incidental passages left on the subject in the writings of the ancients, all recognized this as a fact. Except Clement of Alexandria, one of the fathers of the church, not a solitary writer had left on record any other opinion; and the passage of Clement has itself never been understood, until since the discoveries of Champollion. It seems to be one of those curious facts connected with the history of the human mind, that it requires a great intellect to seize on the simplest element of truth. It is easy to speculate on data, which are assumed without a rigorous examination, and then to make an exhibition of learning which may astonish the world; but, it is the province of the greatest genius to lay hold of simple truth, and establish a foundation utterly immoveable, before there is any attempt at a superstructure. This was the business, and this the achievement of Champollion. Now that the discovery is made, we are amazed at the want of previous penetration. It struck the mind of Champollion, that, if the Egyptian hieroglyphics were ideographic, there must be exceptions, for two substantial reasons: first, because proper names, or names of persons, do not always admit of being expressed by any sign, that is, proper names have not in all cases a meaning; and, second, because foreign names, or those which have no relation to any particular spoken language, could not be represented by conventional signs. These principles appear now to be self-evident, and this is the basis of Champollion's discovery. On this he built the idea, that there must exist among the Egyptians alphabetic characters, which should express the sounds of the spoken language; and, in order to test this principle, he set about the investigation of the celebrated Rosetta stone. This stone, let it be remembered, had on it three inscriptions in different characters. One of these inscriptions was written in Greek, and of course easily decyphered; of the other two, one was written in hieroglyphics, and the other in the common character of the country. The course pursued by Champollion, was exceedingly simple, and, on that account, may be considered masterly. In the Greek text, the name of Ptolemy occurred, together with some names which were foreign to the Egyptian language. In the hieroglyphic inscription, there were certain signs grouped together and frequently repeated; and, what rendered them remarkable was, that they were enclosed in a kind of oval or ring, called a cartouche, and maintained a relative position which seemed to correspond with the Greek word Ptolemy. Champollion conjectured, that there must be some connection between the signs clustered in these rings, and the name of Ptolemy expressed by signs, which would sound like that word; and this led him to expect, that he would get at what he was persuaded was the truth, viz. that the hieroglyphic writing was alphabetic, rather than exclusively ideographic. With the view of testing this, he went into a close analysis of the group of signs which he supposed designated the name of Ptolemy; and, as the result of this analysis, obtained what he considered the equivalents to the letters in the name of this prince.
In order to give our readers an idea of his process of investigation, we will state the signs which he found in the group surrounded by a ring on the Rosetta stone. These are the following: a square—half circle—a flower with the stem bent—a lion in repose—the three sides of a parallelogram—two feathers, and a crooked line. The square, Champollion considered the equivalent of the Greek letter Π—the half circle, Τ—the flower with the stem bent, Ο—the lion in repose, Λ—the three sides of the parallelogram, Μ—the feathers, Η,—and the crooked line, Σ. This gave the name Ptolmês. At this stage of his investigations, Champollion supposed that he had obtained seven signs of an alphabet; but, could he have gone no further, he would have established nothing, and his researches would have passed off with the labours of the learned who had preceded him. To test his principle further, it was necessary, therefore, that he should be able to get at some other monument, on which there should be recognized some name also known by some Greek or other connected inscription. Such a monument was found in an obelisk discovered in the island of Philæ, and transported to London. On this was discovered a group of characters also enclosed in a ring, and containing more signs than the former, some of them similar. On a part of the base which originally supported the obelisk, there was an inscription in Greek, addressed to Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Now, if the basis of Champollion was correct, there ought to be found in the name Cleopatra, such signs as were common to both, and they must perform the same functions which had been previously assigned them; and this was precisely the result. We have this strikingly set forth in a note of the translator, which is here presented.
"To prove that the conjectures of Champollion were true, the first sign in the name of Cleopatra should not be found in the name of Ptolemy, because the letter Κ does not occur in ΠΤΟΛΜΕΣ. This was found to be the fact. The letter Κ represented by a quadrant.