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N° 7. The present Welsh alphabet, which is intirely

Roman.

N° 8. The modern Greek alphabet.

N° 9. The Hebrew aleph-beth.

ALL these are confidered in the following chapter.

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CHA P. XII.

Remarks upon the foregoing alphabets; an enumeration of alphabets; the number of letters originally in several; of primary and fecondary letters; of the rife and deviations of the European alphabets, from the original set of characters.

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CHE number and variety of alphabetical characters, published at various times, is amazingly great; fome were invented to ferve private purpofes among particular focieties of men, who pretended to be endowed with more wisdom than the reft of the world; some were practised by priests, to conceal their religious myfteries from the vulgar; and fome were the offspring of original characters used in Noah's family, which afterwards were, in certain countries, much mutilated, in procefs of time; and, in others, were handed down to us without having undergone any material alteration: and many of those, which cannot be reconciled to fuch as we fhall

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endeavour to prove to be originals, must be placed to the account of whim, or fuperftition; though feveral others may have been formed for literary purposes, even in later times. These are the fentiments which arise in me, when I look over the many alphabetical tables in Claude Duret's history, and feveral more collected by other curious

men.

Now, though I am confined chiefly to researches into the origin of the languages of Europe; yet I cannot avoid faying something of fome of the alphabets of Eastern nations, as I go along; because, upon perusing several collections of them, fome curious particulars occur, which at once may entertain the reader, and ferve to illuftrate what I have undertaken. And from as accurate a confideration of these as I was capable of, and of certain historical anecdotes which presented themselves in the course of my researches, I am forced to conclude, that there are but two original chains of letters, or alphabets, to be found, and these are the parents of moft others in the world.

THE first I fhall mention here, is the ancient Hebrew aleph-beth, which I look upon to be truely original and antediluvian; and yet I cannot but be furprized, that so few of the Afiatic nations have the close affinity to this, in their feveral characters, that might naturally be expected.

AMONG the great numbers to be seen in feveral very curious collections, I can find only the following, which are apparently of Hebrew origin:

1. THE alphabet faid to be written upon the table given to Mofes from heaven. See Claude Duret, Origine des Langues, p. 1.

2. Characters faid to be invented by Efdras, p. 130. 3. The running letters of the German and Spanish Jews, in separate tables, ibid. p. 133.

4. That in the learned Dr. Morton's table, intitled, Babylonium & Judaicum ex Adamico, 747 years before.

CHRIST.

5. Ibid. That from the Rotul. Pentat. in the fynagogue of the Portuguese Jews in London.

6. Ibid. Swinton's Palmyrenean alphabet.

7. In Chamberlain's collection of the Lord's Prayer in several languages. The Rabbinical characters.

8. Ibid. Chaldaic.

9. Ibid. The Samaritan, which is alfo the fame in the Reverend and learned Mr. Anfelm Bailey's Literary and Philofophical Introduction to Laguages.

THE reafon why more of the nations of Afia did not adopt the Hebrew manner of writing, might perhaps be this : the Ifraelites were a people felected by the ALMIGHTY, that the knowledge and worship of Himself should be inviolably kept pure and undefiled among them; whilft the other nations were spreading their idolotrous practices every where: and as they kept their religion and political matters sacred to themselves, so they did their language and letters. The Jews, all along, held the reft of the world in abomination; and they, in their turns, made many attempts to extirpate them from the face of the earth: but they were

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