fleets of Solomon, are comprised in a couple of rare and ingenious volumes, entitled " Traitez Geographiques pour faci"liter l'intelligence de l'Ecriture Sainté."* M. D' Anville has also a memoir on this subject in the Mem. de Litterature tom. xxx, p. 830.

From the elaborate publications of Major RENNEL and Dr. VINCENT you will expect much satisfaction; but, as these works have not yet been imported into this country, I cannot say how particularly useful they will prove to you in that department of ancient geography, you are exploring.

You perhaps wonder, I have said nothing of WELLES Sacred Geography. I do not consider it an authority.

For the freedom of these hints I must beg your pardon. I make them with a wish to lighten your labors by saving you a more voluminous course of reading, than is absolutely necessary. Happy shall I consider myself, if, after having devoted nearly twenty years in rummaging the recesses of antiquity, Į may acceptably present my feeble taper to others, or be allowed with friendly hand to guide them through the darksome vaults, open to them their archives, and examine with them their treasures.

* You will find these volumes in the library of the University at Came bridge.

BIOGRAPHY,

MEMOIRS OF THE AUTHOR OF ANACHARSIS.

[Continued from vol. I, page 318.]

SOME days after our arrival the ambassador presented us to Benedict XIV, whom he had prepossessed in our favor, and who received us with kindness. We then went to Naples, and during a month we were occupied with the sin gularities of this city and its environs. We went to see the

most ancient monuments of Grecian architecture, which exist about thirty leagues beyond Naples in a place, where the city of Poestum had been formerly built.* The apartments of the palace of Portici, in which were collected the antiquities, found in the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeia, often attracted us. We saw with the greatest satisfaction this immense collection of pictures, of statues, of busts, of vases, and utensils of different sorts, objects for the most part distinguished for their beauty, or the uses, for which they had been employed. But we beheld with still greater grief how shamefully four or five hundred manuscripts, found in the subterranean ruins of Herculaneum, were abandoned. Two or three only had been unrolled, and explained by the learned Marochi; unfortunately they contained nothing important, and they were discouraged. Every body assured me, the work would be resumed; but this hope has not been realized. Of late years I have often spoken to the Marquis of Carracioli, ambassador from Naples to France; I wrote to him afterward, when he became prime minister; he answered me, that he was resolved to pursue the project, and to hasten the execution of it; he thought it best to divide, if it were possible, the labor of it among different bodies, and to send successively some of the manuscripts to our academy of belleslettres, others to the royal society of London, others to the university of Gottengen, &c. One or two

* These ruins, which had been discovered not many years before the time, the Abbè Barthelemy visited them, are exactly in the same style with the temples of Theseus at Athens, and that of Jupiter at Girgentum in Sicily. Postum was built by a colony of Lybarites, who were obliged to flee their country. The city was of a square form; the walls in some parts are tolerably entire. The strength, with which they are constructed, might almost seem to bid defiance to time. The buildings, contained within them, which yet remain, are three in number; two of them probably were temples, the third a kind of forum. The order of the columns is doric, fluted without base, and having only five diameters in height. Still their effect is not clumsy. The area of the city is now a cultivated wheat field; and the ground is thickly strewed with morsels of tiles, &c. It is not a little extraordinary, that these ruins should have remained so long undiscovered.

T.

months afterward his death was announced in the public papers.*

I wished to present on my return to the learned, who occupied themselves with paleography, the most ancient specimen of writing, employed in the Grecian manuscripts. I addressed myself to M. Marochi, who prohibited me from communicating any thing. M. de Paderno, keeper of the collection at Portici, made me the same answer; he showed me only a page of a manuscript, which had been cut from top to bottom, when they were discovered. It contained twenty eight lines. I read them five or six times, and under some pretext descended into the court yard, and traced them upon a piece of paper, preserving as well, as I could, the disposition and form of the letters. I came up again, I compared the copy mentally with the original, and found the means to rectify two or three little errors, that had escaped me. In this fragment were mentioned the persecutions, experienced by the philosophers, except Epicurus. sent it immediately to the academy of belleslettres, requesting them not to publish it, for fear of offenidng Marochi and Paderno.

I

In the mean time the Marquis d' Ossun, ambassador from France to Naples, told me, that the king, informed of my mission, had expressed a desire to see me. This prince was

* If the illustrious Carracioli had lived, this and many other more important operations would have been executed for the advantage of his country; but the king of Naples is more pleased with hunting wild boars in the woods of Caserta, while his ministers are hunting his subjects all over the kingdom, than occupying himself about antique manuscripts. However by the munificence of the prince of Wales the operation has been resumed under the care of an Englishman about three years since, and will now probably be completed. The only thing of consequence, discovered at the tinie, the wri ter was there, was a work of Aristotle upon the manners and customs of his own times, and which cannot fail of being interesting. Hopes have been entertained, that by this fortunate discovery many works of antiquity, hitherto lost, may be recovered. The appearance of these manuscripts very much resemble a stick of wood, long buried in the ground. They may be crumbled to dust in the hand, and the letters appear, as they do on a piece of burnt paper. The writing is very beautiful, and in those, the writer saw, he did not observe any characters. The operation of unrolling them is very simple, but very tedious.

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The care

then in his superb palace of Caserta, which he was finishing.* I was presented to him, while he was at dinner; he spoke to me with pleasure of the discoveries, that had been made in his kingdom; appeared to regret, that the keeper of his medals was absent, so that I could not see them; ordered, that I should be shown the superb columns of marble, recently brought to Caserta, and had my name inscribed among those, to whom the volumes of the antiquities of Herculaneum were to be successively distributed. of explaining them was confided to Monsignor Baiardi, a Roman prelate, whom the king had drawn into his kingdom. A vast and indefatigable compiler, respectable for the qualities of his heart, formidable for his memory to those, who undertook to hear or read him, Baiardi had cultivated every species of literature, and transported into his head an enormous, unshapen mass of knowledge, which escaped from him with confusion. He commenced with a general catalogue of the monuments, preserved at Portici, in one volume in folio; and, as the engravings to represent them were not ready, he obtained permission of the king to place at the head of the grand commentary a preface, destined to instruct us, as to the epoch, the consequences, and utility of the researches into Herculaneum. He published the commencement in seven volumes quarto, without having entered upon his subject.

I will describe his method to guide those, who may be disposed to imitate him. He, who explains these monuments, ought to make known their proportions; but what measures ought to be employed? Thence a long incursion into the measures of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Grecians, and Romans. These monuments were principally taken from the ruins of Herculaneum; this name, the same with that of Heraclea, was given to a number of cities. Something then must be said about all these cities; another incursion into the fields of ancient geography. Herculane

This palace, one of the most magnificent in Europe, is not, and probably never will be finished. T.

um was founded by Hercules; but there were many heroes of that name, such as the Syrian, the Egyptian, the Gre cian, &c. It is necessary then to follow them in their different expeditions, and determine, to which of them our Herculaneum owes its origin; hence an excursion into the regions of mythology. It may be easily conceived, that similar researches would have easily conducted the author even to a twelfth volume. Unfortunately he was requested to stop in this pleasing career, and sometime afterward he returned to Rome, when I visited him. I asked him, if he should finish his preface; he answered me, that he had suspended it, and by way of reposing himself he was occupied with an abridgement of universal history, which he should be able to compress into twelve volumes 12mo, and in which he would commence by the solution of a problem one of the most important in astronomy and history; it was to fix the point, where God placed the sun in forming the world; he had just discovered that point, and showed it to me upon a celestial globe.

Perhaps I have said too much about Monsignor Baiardi; but, as I write only for myself, or at most for some friends, I will finish the picture, and relate to myself the first visit, I made to him at Naples. I found him in a large hall; a violent cold kept him upon a sofa, whose aspect attested its long services. He was covered with garments so antique, that they might have been taken for the spoils of some ancient inhabitant of Herculaneum. He was at that moment occupied with his secretary. I begged him to continue, and seated myself at the foot of the sofa. Some monks from Calabria had consulted him about a heresy, which began to spread itself in the neighbourhood. They had just learned, that a certain Copernicus sustained, that the earth turned round the sun.* What then becomes of that passage in

*The ignorance of these Calabrian monks may appear incredible. But the province of Calabria, though gifted with a fine climate and productive soil, is one of the most wretched countries in Europe. The physical face of it is hardly more disfigured by earthquakes, than the moral is by ignorance and