The origin and progress of the art of writing a connected narrative of the development of the art, its primeval phases in Egypt, China, Mexico, etc. ; its middle state in the cuneatic systems of Nineveh and Persepolis, to its introduction to Europe through the medium of the Hebrew, Phoenician, and Greek systems, and its subsequent progress to the present day. By Henry Noel Humphreys ... Illustrated by a number of specimens of the writing of all ages, and a series of facsimiles from autograph letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.