Part 8

But by far the most important light in which we republicans can contemplate the career of George IV. in connexion with the object of increasing our love for the institutions under which we live, is that of morality and religion. The point may be conceded, which is always advanced as the main argument in support of hereditary monarchical government--that it is better adapted to preserve the peace of a country by keeping the succession free from difficulty and doubt, though a reference to history may perhaps warrant the denial even of this position, by exhibiting the various usurpations, murders, unnatural rebellions of children against parents, and other heart-sickening crimes, the consequences of the right invested in one family of exercising sovereign rule, which have so often plunged whole nations into misery and blood;--but this point may be acknowledged; we may admit that elections of chief magistrates are more likely to be the source of frequent troubles. If it can nevertheless be shown, that there is that in the very essence of monarchical institutions which is in any way hostile to virtue, the question ought to be considered as settled in favour of the system that is free from this insuperable objection; for it cannot be denied, that any principle at all tending to aid the propagation of immorality, is the worst which can be admitted into the social and political compacts by which men are united together, and should most be deprecated and eschewed. No matter what apparent or real beneficial results may flow from it, they cannot counterbalance the detriment it may inflict upon the surest guarantee of permanent good to man, both in his individual and aggregate capacity--both with regard to his temporal and eternal interests. National happiness and prosperity of a durable character, are inseparable from national virtue. The evils produced by dissensions concerning the chief power in a state, are in a degree contingent and temporary; those engendered by immorality are certain and lasting. Let then the pages, not merely of the book which tells the story of George IVth of England, but of all history be consulted, and who will deny that they furnish overwhelming evidence that the moral atmosphere of courts has been at all times tainted and baleful; that they have been ever the centres of corruption and vice, and that they must ever be so? They must ever be so, we assert, because the natural and unavoidable result of raising any collection of persons above the opinion, as it were, of the rest of the world, and of surrounding them with a species of _prestige_ which prevents their vices and follies from being viewed in their real hideousness, is to ensure amongst them the sway of immorality. They thus form a sanctuary for corruption, which can never be established in a country where no factitious distinctions exist; there profligacy can have no refuge when hard pressed by public opinion, no ramparts behind which to protect itself from the assaults of that potent enemy; and it will never in consequence be able to obtain there any other than individual dominion.

If we turn our eyes upon the condition of the English court as it now exists, although it may be less exceptionable than when George was at its head, we shall find sufficient justification of the foregoing remarks. The present sovereign, it is well known, is unfortunate in possessing a mind of that nervous description, which renders any considerable excitement a thing to be avoided; it was the effect produced upon it by his appointment to the Lord High Admiraltyship during his brother's life, which occasioned his removal from that post. His moral character is certainly less disreputable than that of his predecessor; but who can witness, without feelings akin to disgust, the spectacle of a family of illegitimate offspring exalted in the palace, and following him in all his perambulations? It is far from our wish to cast any reflection upon those unfortunate persons, who are in no way accountable for the ignominy and guilt connected with their birth. The shame and the reproach are for the author of the stain, who exposes himself to double reprehension, by the countenance he virtually lends to the cause of immorality. William IV., however, is a paragon in comparison to his next brother, the Duke of Cumberland, a person, who, if he has given any warrant for the tenth part of the imputations which rest upon him, can only have escaped the penalties inflicted by the law on the greatest offences, because he is the brother of the king. We cannot convey a better idea of the estimation in which he is held in London, than by stating, that in all the caricatures where an attempt is made to embody the evil spirit, his person is used for that purpose.

"What poor things are kings! What poorer things are nations to obey Him, whom a petty passion does command!"

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 Pi--the half circle, Tau--the flower with the stem bent, Omicron--the lion in repose, Lamda--the three sides of the parallelogram, Mu--the feathers, Eta,--and the crooked line, Sigma. This gave the name Ptolmes. 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 Philae, 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 _K_ does not occur in PTOLMES. This was found to be the fact. The letter _K_ represented by _a quadrant_.

"The second sign (_a lion in repose_ which represents the _Lamda_), is exactly similar to the fourth sign in the name of Ptolemy, which, as we have already seen, represents a _Lamda_.

"The third sign in the name of Cleopatra is _a feather_; which should represent the _single_ vowel _Epsilon_, because the _two feathers_ in the name of Ptolemy represent _double Epsilon_, which is equivalent to the Greek _Eta_. Such is its import. As Greppo remarks in a note, and as has been fully proved by subsequent investigations of Champollion, the sign which resembles two feathers, corresponds also with the vowels _Eta_, _Iota_, and with the diphthongs _Alpha Iota_, _Epsilon Iota_.

"The fourth character in the hieroglyphic cartouche of Cleopatra, representing _a flower with a stalk bent back_ (or a knop), corresponds to the _Omicron_ in the Greek name of this queen. This sign is the very same with the third character in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy, which there represents _Omicron_.

"The fifth sign is in the form of _a square_. It here represents the _Pi_, and is the same with the first sign in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy.

"The sixth sign, corresponding to the Greek vowel _Alpha_ in Cleopatra, is _a hawk_; which of course ought not to be found in the name of Ptolemy (as it has no letter _Alpha_), and it is not.

"The seventh character is an _open hand_, representing the _Tau_; but this hand is not found in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy, where _Tau_, the second letter in that name, is represented by a half circle. The reader will see in Note G, why these two signs stand for the same letter and sound.

"The eighth character in the name of Cleopatra, which is _a mouth_, and which here represents the Greek _Rho_, should not be found in the name of Ptolemy, and it is not.

"The ninth and last sign in the name of the queen, which represents the vowel _Alpha_, is _the hawk_, the very same sign which represents this vowel in the third syllable of the same name.

"The name of Cleopatra is terminated by two hieroglyphic symbolical signs, _the egg and the half circle_, which, according to Champollion, are always used to _denote the feminine gender_."

These were great advances, and our readers will now easily understand the process by which the distinguished discoverer arrived at his results. Step by step, he has thus been able to form his _phonetic alphabet_. In September, 1822, he gave an account of his discovery, and of the principles of his system, in a letter to Mons. Dacier, perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, and of Belles Lettres. In 1824, Champollion published the first edition of his work, "Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens, ou recherches sur les elemens premiers de cette ecriture sacree, &c." This is the work which is reviewed in the number of this journal for June, 1827, p. 438. In the year 1828, a second edition of this work was called for, and this second edition is rendered more valuable, by having appended to it the letter to Mons. Dacier.

It is not the purpose of the present article, to go into an account of the results of Champollion's labours;--this has been amply done in preceding pages of this journal. The essay of Mons. Greppo, gave us a favourable opportunity, following the course of the author, of stating in brief, the process by which Champollion arrived at his most valuable and interesting conclusions. The object of the essay is to show the advantages which this discovery gives to the study of sacred criticism. This is the special aim of the work; and, in relation to this, the author has observed:--