. To diminish this labor the ancients contrived tables
of brass, copper, lead, and sometimes of wood, and cut the
inscriptions upon them by the use of various tools and implements.
Still it is obvious, that by such methods as these the art of writing
could only be used to an extremely limited extent, such as for brief
inscriptions in registers and upon monuments, where a very few words
would express all that it was necessary to record.

In process of time, however, the plan of _painting_ the letters by
means of a black dye upon a smooth surface, was introduced. The
surface employed to receive these inscriptions was, at first, the skin
of some animal prepared for this purpose, and the dye used for ink,
was a colored liquid obtained from a certain fish. This method of
writing, though in some respects more convenient than the others, was
still slow, and the materials were expensive; and it was a long time
before the new art was employed for any thing like continuous
composition. Cadmus is supposed to have come into Greece about the
year 1550 before Christ; and it was not until about 650 before
Christ,--that is, nearly nine hundred years later, that the art of
writing was resorted to in Greece to record laws.

The evidences that writing was very little used in any way during this
long period of nine hundred years, are furnished in various allusions
contained in poems and narratives that were composed during those
times, and committed to writing afterward. In the poems of Homer, for
instance, there is no allusion, from the beginning to the end, to any
monument or tomb containing any inscription whatever; although many
occasions occur in which such inscriptions would have been made, if
the events described were real, and the art of writing had been
generally known, or would have been imagined to be made, if the
narratives were invented. In one case a ship-master takes a cargo on
board, and he is represented as having to remember all the articles,
instead of making a record of them. Another case still more striking
is adduced. In the course of the contest around the walls of Troy, the
Grecian leaders are described at one time as drawing lots to determine
which of them should fight a certain Trojan champion. The lots were
prepared, being made of some substance that could be marked, and when
ready, were distributed to the several leaders. Each one of the
leaders then marked his lot in some way, taking care to remember what
cha