His argument is drawn from the frequent mention of the Tiber and this river in the same passage, as:

Hæc fontis stagna Numici,

Hunc Thybrim fluvium;'

with two or three other passages. Another argument is taken from the account given of the Trojans reconnoitring the country on the day after their landing:

Postera cum prima,' &c.

from which lines M. de B. would conclude that the Numicius could be scen almost from the camp.

The confidence with which any hypothesis, however trifling its subject, is supported, ought to be limited in proportion to the strength of the proofs on which it rests. Accord ing to M. de B.'s own account of the country, Laurentum is but a short league from the camp of Eneas, and two leagues farther on is Lavinium. If then we judge Virgil by the most rigid rules, three leagues is by no means an impossible distance for the Trojans to penetrate, especially in the long days of July, in which month Eneas is supposed to have landed on the shore of Latium, and in a country which so many prophecies had assured them, was to be the scene of the restoration of Trojan glory. As to the circumstance of the Tiber and the Numicius being mentioned frequently together, not a shadow of an argument can be drawn from this for their proximity as nothing is more common, especially in poetry, than to designate a country by the principal streams that water it.

This author is more happy in his choice of a situation for Laurentum :

I had set myself the following problem to solve: What is the situation of Laurentum which adapts itself at once to all the pas sages of Virgil? I had shifted my opinion three times; at list f determined its place a little above the Laurentum of Pliny, by the side of the hills of Decimo, at a short distance from the marsh, Having gone through this labour, after the repeated perusal of Virgil, I went to consult the map; and I saw precisely at the place of my Laurentum, the name of Selva Laurentina, and very near it, beside the hill, the name of Picus preserved in that of Traigsina di Picchi'.

In another place (P. 133) we have the detail of the author's reasonings which led him to the solution of his problem:

Virgil's Laurentum was not situated upon the hills, For Turnus, learning the death of Camilla, abandons the hils and woods to retire to Laurentum, "Desinit obsessos colles, nemora

to the town.

aspera linquit." B. xi. v. 908. Eneas rapidly pursues him, and arrives at the town close behind him. "Sic ambo ad muros," &c. Eneas, who follows him, sees afar off, the troops of Turnus, returning from the hills. It was some distance then from the hills But Laurentum was not near the sea, For, in no one ergagement which we read of before this town, is there any mention made of the sea, which is so often spoken of when the battle is before the Trojan camp. Laurentum was not far from the river, because Virgil says (B. xii. v. 255) that the Latins saw an eagle holding a swan in its talons, which it let fall into the Tiber. How could they see these birds, if Laurentum had been very far from the river? Virgil is not guilty of such oversights. And yet Laurentum is near the lake or marsh, its distance from which did not exceed the length of the Trojan battalions, which, when ranged around Turnus, at the time of his engaging in single combat with Eneas, extended on one side to the walls of the town, and on the other to the lake. "Hinc vasta palus, hinc ardua monia cingunt." The wild olive, where Eneas had planted his spear, consecrated to the tutelary God of the town, Faunus, by the mariners escaped from shipwreck, was not very near the sea shore.

The town of Laurentum, then, being neither upon the hills, nor very far from the Tiber, nor upon the lake, nor close to the sea-shore, we must look for it in some intermediate point; and I find the situation which answers all these conditions, precisely at the spot known at present by the name of Selva Laurentina.'

We must not omit to mention the singular circumstance that a sort of small feluccas in the neighbourhood of Ostia, at Antium and at Nettuno, is called Troja; and that at Monte Circello there still survive some traditional superstitions respecting a maga, or enchantress, who is said formerly to have inhabited the grotto near its top.

To relieve the tediousness of topographical disquisitions, we shall insert an extract which every Briton, at least, will read with pleasure. Speaking of the prospect of the sea from Torre-Paterno, he says:

At a distance we saw the flag flying on lord Elgin's frigate, lately arrived from Constantinople. Agricola, the father-in-law of 'Lacitus, and the friend of Pliny,-Agricola, the conqueror of Albion, would have been much surprised could he have seen with me the wild Britons now become so great, near the humble desert of that Rome which was once so proud. He would have seen with sorrow the long chastisement of those Romans, the tyrants and devastators of the globe, paying at length with usury all the calamities which their ambition had brought upon the world.'

Lavinium is placed, according to some preceding authors, in the same situation with modern Pratica. The derivation or this word, if it be just, is a curious instance of the tradi tion of names:

Piso, one of the oldest historians of Rome, relates that Eneas having perished in the Numicius, his son built a temple to his memory, where he was adored under the name of Jupiter Indiges. Hence the town of Lavinium was called by the people the Father's Rocks, Saxa Patrica, whence arose the name Pratica.

We may observe here a great singularity in the language of the people of modern Rome and of all Latium, that of transposing letters and syllables, and of pronouncing like Polichinel. The Romans of the present day gravely say crapa for capra, a shegoat; they say frebbe instead of febbre, fever; paduli for paludi; &c.'

This, however, can hardly be called a singularity in the Italian language, since there are probably a thousand instances of the same sort of transposition in every language. This is often the case with Latin words derived from the Greek, as forma from popor. In our own patois, who has has not heard geart for great, and reckeration for recreation? The letter r, above all others, seems to delight in this transposition.

Every school-boy has heard of the violence of the 'yellow Tiber. Surrounded by mountains, and fed by so many tributary streams, a short succession of showers is sufficient to swell it to an alarming degree, and at those times it carries away with it a vast quantity of sand and slime from the volcanic soil over which it passes. It is almost demonstrable that from these deposits of the river, the shore near its mouth, and especially the Isola Sacra, has been considerably augmented. And thus far M. de B. offers nothing new. (See Lancisius's remarks on Pliny's villa.) But he extends this theory to a degree beyond all common sense.

Near Ostia,' says he,500 paces from the sea was the camp of Eneas. All that country, therefore, which I see beyond, is the work of 3000 years. On the other side of the Tiber, the salt marshes of Ancus Martius are no longer now near the sea. All the country beyond is, therefore, the work of 20 centuries. But in the time of Eneas, this sandy shore, this neck of land, placed between this chain of hills' (he means that which extends from the Tiber nearly to Antium) and the sea, existed already long before; for the Sicilians, the Aborigines, the Pelasgi, had preceded the Latins in this country. In comparing the work of 3000 years, which I have before my eyes, with the time requisite to form this extended coast, how many ages do I still find? But these volcanic hills which I tread under my feet (for these hills existed previous to the formation of the plain of Laurentum) were the ancient shore of the sea. How many thousands of years must it have required to amass this rubbish of another world, these hills, this Latium, and this vast Campagna di Roma, which the volcanoes have thrown up from the bosom of the main, and this Mount Alban, where near 3000 feet are raised, one grain at a time, by the eruptions of

Volcanoes! In order to determine the number of these centuries, we need only take the work of Etna or Vesuvius for a scale. And these ejections of volcanoes, though so ancient, are them selves but fragments of a world still more ancient! The imagi nation heaps conjecture on conjecture; we mount up the torrent of ages, but can no where reach their source. I lose myself in immensity,' &c.

We entirely agree with this author, that his imagination is here heaping conjecture upon conjecture, Ossa upon Pelion, until he completely loses himself. But let us examine his theory at length.-After speaking of the elevation of the banks of the Tiber, by the accumulation of sand thrown out by its current, he proceeds:

The second effect of the accumulations of the Tiber, is the addition of land formed along the ancient sea-shore, from Ostia to Antium, which I call the coast of Laurentum. All this sandy coast is of the same nature with the new banks of earth which are every day collecting below the Isola Sacra and Ostia, and which we know, to a certainty, to be the work of the Tiber.

These accumulations must have commenced along the ancient shore, that is, along the hills which the volcanoes have thrown up out of the waters. We see by the modern collections of the river, that the currents make their depôts toward the south rather than the north; for the low foundations formed by the right arm of the river are to the south of its mouth, and the left arm makes its depôts in the same direction. While the collections have been able to follow this direction, they have laboured to elevate the coast of Laurentum, situated to the south of the Tiber. This coast once formed, such as we see it, the currents began to labouf in the direction which they have at present; which is not yet completed, because the marsh is not yet entirely filled up.

We may reasonably suppose that the square league of land formed below the town of Ostia, has been the work of 3000 years, because we know that it began under Ancus Martius, and can conjecture where the sea-shore was in the time of Eneas. The coast of Laurentum, which may be from nine to ten leagues in length, by three-quarters of a league in breadth, all composed of similar accumulations, will then (admitting a like proportion) be the work of between 20 and 30 thousand years.

I shali observe moreover, that this coast does not discover any volcanic traces. I conclude from this, that the antiquity of the volcanoes, exceeding the time of the formation of this coast of Latium, must be placed as it were in another world, and must be sought for far beyond even all fabulous traces of history.”.

But, before the volcanoes, these very hills did not exist, and the country which they now occupy, being below the level of the sea, must have been overflown. Latium formed, therefore, at that time, a gulph which extended, without doubt, as far as the Sabine mountains. Soracte, and the Mount Alban, were islands, as that of Circe was in Homer's time.'

Really, this author heaps his thousands upon ten-thousands with a most unsparing hand. A thousand years seem to him no more than a single day. But, considering the immense work upon which he has employed father Tiber, it was but fair to allow him a handsome round period of time in which he might accomplish it, especially as he is not willing to grant him any assistance from the eruption of lava from these volcanic hills, from the ground washed down their declivities, or from the retiring of the sea. But why is M. de B. so modest in his demands of 20 or 30 thousand years? He has still a considerable portion of the boot of Italy left; it is only adding some few millions of centuries, and the whole may be supposed the work of the Po. Seriously, is it not surprising that a person who terms Ovid the great theologian, who most religiously believes the stories of Cacus and of Anna Perenna, can thus silently pass by the Mosaic account of the creation as an exploded fable? It is not the first time we have had occasion to remark and to lament the credulousness of incredulity.

One thing, however, suggested itself to us as an illustration of Virgil in the above extracts, which, though many may be inclined to consider it as a fanciful refinement, we are unwilling wholly to omit. Every reader of Virgil will recollect his account of the rescue of Turnus by the intervention of Juno, in the tenth book. The hero pursues a phantom of Eneas into a vessel ready for his reception in the Tiber; the. cables are slipt by an invisible hand, and the vessel, borne rapidly down the stream into the sea, is then carried by the current in a southerly direction, until it reaches Ardea in safety:

• Labitur alta secans fluctuque æstuque secundo,
Et patris antiquam Dauni defertur ad urbem.'

This is precisely the direction in which the Tiber, according to M. de B.'s theory, has made its deposits; and supposing that theory to be just in part (for we are not now concerned with his secular calculations), and that Virgil was acquainted with the circumstance, it seems to throw some light upon this piece of fiction, and to justify in some measure his account of the escape of Turnus, which, notwithstanding what Heyne says, has always appeared to us but a sorry shift of the poet's to spin out his work two books farther.

Having been so prolix in our extracts and remarks wherever Virgil was concerned, we must deny ourselves the pleasure of making selections from the second part of this work, which is employed in observations on the air, poverty, population, police, agriculture, soil, &c. of modern Latium. The author's remarks APP. Vol. 4. I i