before its
discovery.

Ere the invention of recording events by writing, trees were planted,
rude altars were erected, or heaps of stone, to serve as memorials of
past events. Hercules probably could not write when he fixed his famous
pillars.

The most ancient mode of writing was on _bricks_, _tiles_, and
_oyster-shells_, and on _tables of stone_; afterwards on _plates_ of
various materials, on _ivory_, on _barks_ of trees, on _leaves_ of
trees.[7]

Engraving memorable events on hard substances was giving, as it were,
speech to rocks and metals. In the book of Job mention is made of
writing on _stone_, on _rocks_, and on sheets of _lead_. On tables of
_stone_ Moses received the law written by the finger of God. Hesiod's
works were written on _leaden_ tables: lead was used for writing, and
rolled up like a cylinder, as Pliny states. Montfaucon notices a very
ancient book of eight leaden leaves, which on the back had rings
fastened by a small leaden rod to keep them together. They afterwards
engraved on bronze: the laws of the Cretans were on bronze tables; the
Romans etched their public records on brass. The speech of Claudius,
engraved on plates of bronze, is yet preserved in the town-hall of
Lyons, in France.[8] Several bronze tables, with Etruscan characters,
have been dug up in Tuscany. The treaties among the Romans, Spartans,
and the Jews, were written on brass; and estates, for better security,
were made over on this enduring metal. In many cabinets may be found the
discharge of soldiers, written on copper-plates. This custom has been
discovered in India: a bill of feoffment on copper, has been dug up near
Bengal, dated a century before the birth of Christ.

Among these early inventions many were singularly rude, and miserable
substitutes for a better material. In the shepherd state they wrote
their songs with thorns and awls on straps of leather, which they wound
round their crooks. The Icelanders appear to have scratched their
_runes_, a kind of hieroglyphics, on walls; and Olaf, according to one
of the Sagas, built a large house, on the bulks and spars of which he
had engraved the history of his own and more ancient times; while
another northern hero appears to have had nothing better than his own
chair and bed to perpetuate his own heroic acts on. At the town-hall, in
Hanover, are kept twelve wooden boards, overlaid with bees'-wax, on
which are written the names of owners of houses, but not the names of