WRI'TING, an art and act of express ing and conveying our ideas to others by letters or characters visible to the eye. Without its aid the experience of each generation would hare been almost en tirely lost to succeeding ages, and only a faint glimmer of truth could have been discerned through the mists of tradition. The most ancient remains of writing, which have been transmitted to us, are upon hard substances, such as stones and metals, which were used for edicts and matters of public notoriety. Thus we read that the decalogue was written on two tables of stone ; but this practice was not peculiar to the Jews, for it was used by most of the Eastern nations, as well as by the Greeks and Romans. The laws penal, civil, and ceremonial, among the Greeks, were engraven on tables of brass, called cijrbes. The Chinese, before the invention of paper, wrote or engraved with an iron tool, or style, upon thin boards or on bamboo. Pliny says, that table-books of wood were in use before the time of Homer. In later times these tables were usually waxed over, and written upon with a style. What was written upon the tables which were thns waxed over was easily effaced, and by smoothing the wax new matter !night be substituted in the place of what was writ ten before. The bark of trees was also used for writing by the ancients, and is so still in several parts of Asia. The
same may be said of the leaves of trees. But the Greeks and Romans continued the use of waxed table-books long after the use of papyrus, leaves, and skins became common, because they were so convenient for correcting extemporary compositions.
X, the twenty-fourth letter of the Eng lish alphabet, is borrowed from the ti reek. When used at the beginning of a word, it has precisely the sound of z, but in the middle and at the end of words, its sound is the same as ks ; as, war, la.rury, tax &jar., he. In Freneb, .x has the various pronunciations of RS, gz, aqui z, accord ing to circumstances. The Italians never use it, on acco•rt it; guttural charac ter, but express it by se, as in _diessua dro; and the German., generally substi tute for it, Its, gs, nr c/ts X begins no word in our language but. snob no are of Greek original ; and is in few others but what are of Latin derivation. As II nu meral, X stands for ten. When laid horizontally, thus, ti, it stands for a thousand, and with a dash over it, ten thousand. As an abbreviation, X sten& for Christ, as in Xn., Christian ; Xmas., rist ot as.