sible but superficial bishop of Avranches in his whole work. The Euxine was the scene of the ancient trade. It was hence the productions of the north were received by means of the numerous rivers, and of the east through the passes of Mount Caucasus. The latter were seised by Sesostris, and the dépót was assailed by the Argonauts-for this was in reality the golden fleece. The harbours of the Troad, at the entrance of the Bosporus, rendered it a convenient spot for mutual communication. It was always easy to enter the straits by a southwest wind, the prevailing one in the Egaan; and the currents. afforded an equally easy communication to return.

Hence the riches of Troy, rather than the insult offered to Hercules, occasioned its first destruction-for the Argonautic expedition, as we shall on another occasion show, was merely a predatory one.

The first Troy was seemingly built near the sea, probably in consequence of the convenience afforded by the harbours. Taught by their disasters, the Trojans next founded their city in the vicinity of Mount Ida. Their rear was defended by this mountain; their right by the grove of fig-trees: they were hence no longer exposed to a predatory incursion, but required a regular siege. The cause of the concerted expedition of the Greeks is said to have been the rape of Helen; but it cannot be concealed that the independent states were not likely to be excited in a cause so little interesting to the whole. The adventure of Paris was in the piratical style of a freebooter—a character neither uncommon, nor, as we find in different parts of Homer, disgraceful; and we observe, among the presents selected by Hecuba to ransom the body of Hector, a robe brought from Sparta, with Helen. In fact, this piratical expedition seems to have been avenged by another, not merely contined to Troy-for Lemnos and Samothrace were confessedly laid under contribution; and, from accident or design, the coasts of Mysia were for a time ravaged, instead of the Troad. If any additional argument for the importance of this coast, as a rich commercial dépôt, were wanted, we might cite the obscure narrative of former descents. It is sufficient, however, to notice the subsequent rebuilding of a third Troy nearer the coast; of the encouragement and fiberality of Alexander, all whose establishments were fixed with commercial views; and, above all, the magnificent designs of Constantine, till he found the harbours would no longer admit large ships.

Advancing this preface, we may very advantageously follow our author's history, which, though short, is interesting, lively, and satisfactory.

Avoiding the question concerning the limits of the Troia or Troas, about which authors have varied, I shall follow the very antient geographer Scylax of Caryanda, who makes it, as Strabo

has observed, commence at Abydos; and, in Asia, shall confine my researches to the district, of which the coast, beginning at the junction of the Propontis with the Hellespont, reaches to Cape Lectos; including the region of Mount Ida connected with it, serva ing as it were for a back-ground to the landscape as beheld from the sea; and also some places situate on the opposite side: in Eu rope, to the corresponding coast of the Chersonesus of Thrace, ending in the promontory where the Hellespont falls into the Egaan. I shall not enter at present on the local detail, but, referring the reader to the annexed map of the country, proceed with its history.' P. 2.

From what quarter the Troäd was peopled, is of little consequence, though it engages a part of Dr. Chandler's attention. Tradition has conveyed Dardanus, its king, from Samos or Samothrace on the west: history supports a continued population from the east. It was probably, as tradition asserts, once a marsh, and gradually rendered populons, as the ground grew harder, and more capable of being inhabited. The early names of the chieftains were evidently fictitious, Helle must be drowned, to give a name to the Hellespont; and Tros must reign, for the sake of an etymology. The Greeks have always had recourse to such expedients, to appropriate to themselves countries in which they were only colonists; and, in many instances, Celtic and descriptive names have become Grecian by the happy substitution of a fictitious ancestor. In general, when such shifts occur in the Grecian history, or when the genealogy terminates in a deity, we may conclude, either that little is known, or that Phrygian or Celtic appellations are accidentally misunderstood, or designedly misinterpreted.

The dominions of Priam, who from little became great and a king of kings, comprised the whole of the country lying within the island of Lesbos, Phrygia, and the Hellespont; and were divided into eight or nine dynasties. Of the portion within our limits, the mountain-side, and the tract beneath Ida, toward the sea, consti tuted Dardania; in which was the city Dardanus or Dardania, possessed by the Dardani or Dardanii. Troy or Ilium belonged to the Troes or Trojans. The other places noticed in the Ilias are, in Asia, Abydos, Thymbra, Scepsis, and Tenedos; which island had been recently peopled by Tennes, from whom it was named; the son, according to some, of Cygnus, a Thracian by descent, and king of Colone, on the opposite continent of Asia. The Thracians of the Chersonesus are distinguished by the poet as dwellers on the Hellespont, and Sestos is joined with Abydos and Arisbe, which last, from an epithet bestowed on it, is supposed to have been the principal city in that jurisdiction.

The Troia seems, in the time of Priam, to have been inhabited chiefly by villagers, who cultivated the soil; or by peasants, who were dispersed over the country, attending cattle in the plains and on Mount Ida. In Asia, as well as Greece, the sons of the most

exalted personages were then commonly employed in keeping flocks and herds; which constituted a large portion of the opulence, if not the entire revenue, of their fathers. This had been the occupation of Anchises and Æneas. The mares of Priam fed in the pastures of Abydos, under the care of his son Democoon; and his oxen, to omit other instances, under that of Alexander, or Paris, on Mount Ida.

If, according to old tradition, iron-ore was first discovered and manufactured by dwellers on Mount Ida, the Phoenicians, it is likely, frequented the Tröia, even before Priam, to traffic for the metal while it was rare. They are mentioned by Homer as resorting to the ports of Lemnos, with the pretious merchandise of Sidon. A large silver bowl belonging to Achilles, which the poet describes as of incomparable beauty, had been a present from some of them to the king of that island; and queen Hecuba possessed store of robes embroidered by Sidonian women, and procured for her by Alexander or Paris, her son; whose return from his voyage was made memorable by another article of importation which had bet ter been omitted. This was Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta; to recover whom and the treasures with which she had eloped, was the object of the famous confederacy of Grecian princes under Agamemnon, brother of the injured husband.' P. 10.

This passage is singular in many views, particularly in what respects iron; for, though this metal occur in rocks of the earliest formation, it was not used in the warlike weapons of the ancients. The hardest metal they knew was copper with an admixture of tin. We confess that we have sought in vain for the passage quoted in Diodorus Siculus, and suspect some mistake. It is, however, certain, that iron was known before its manufacture was understood.

Our author next gives an abstract of the siege, and seems to think that it was not seriously undertaken till the tenth year. Various skirmishes and accidental rencontres had occurred, but no decisive attack had been made. He then follows the events subsequent to the death of Achilles, either as noticed in the Odyssey, or from the best accounts of subsequent historians. The evidence in favour of the credibility of the story is added, from which we shall select a page or two, as a specimen of our author's concise refutation, and the lively archness with which he sometimes unexpectedly animates an otherwise dry disquisition.

This island of Achilles, which is mentioned by Euripides and by many other antient authors, was formed by mud from rivers; and perhaps has since been connected with the continent of Europe. But, whatever it may now be, for the spot has not been explored, it was originally small, and is described as desert and woody, as abounding in living creatures, and much frequented by aquatic birds, which were regarded as the ministers of the hero, fanning his grove with their wings, and refreshing the ground with drops, as it were of rain, from their bodies. He was said to be visited

there by Protesilaus, and several of his friends, who had been likewise released from the regions of Pluto, to appear sometimes; and oftener to be heard, playing on his lyre and accompanying it with a voice divinely clear. A long and narrow peninsula in the same sea was called The Course of Achilles; being the place where he was reputed to take his exercise of running.

It does not often happen that antient fiction can, as in this instance, be traced to its source; and scepticism or incredulity is fre quently the result of difficulty in discriminating true history from its alloy. Mr. Bryant has contended, that the two poems of Homer are mere fables, and that no such war, no such place as Troy, has ever existed. Having made a large collection of idle and ab surd stories from different authors about Jupiter and Leda, and Helen (whom he will not allow to have been carried away from Sparta by Paris), and several other persons concerned, he declares, and nobody, I imagine, will dissent from a position of so great latitude, that the account of the Trojan war, as delivered by Homer and other Grecian writers, is attended with so many instances of inconsistency and so many contradictions, that it is an insult to reason to afford it any credit."

In the description, says the same learned person, of the siege of Troy and the great events with which it was accompanied, Homer "is very particular and precise. The situation of the city is pointed out as well as the camp of the Grecians," and various objects, "with the course and fords of the river, are distinctly marked, so that the very landscape presents itself to the eye of the reader.The poet also" mentions "several" subsequent "events-in medias res non secus ac notas auditorem rapit-" all which "casual references seem to have been portions of a traditional history well known in the time of Homer, but, as they are introduced almost undesignedly, they are generally attended with a great semblance of truth. For such incidental and partial intimations are seldom to be found in romance and fable." Who, on reading these remarks, would suspect it to be the scope of the author, to prove the whole story of Troy as ideal as a fairy-tale?

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I will not enter here on a particular examination of the argu ments used by Mr. Bryant on this occasion. Some of them I shall be obliged, though unwilling, to notice as we proceed. It may, however, be now mentioned, that among other novel opinions, for which I refer to his Dissertation, he maintains, that the groundwork of the Ilias, if it had any, was foreign to the country on which we are employed; that the history never related, but has been borrowed and transferred, to it; that, in short, the original poem of Troy, the parent of the Ilias, was an Egyptian composition. I shall add a companion or two to this notable discovery. A disciple of Epicurus undertook to prove the Ilias to be entirely an allegory; and I have somewhere read, that it was not first written in Greek, but is a translation from the Celtic language.' P. 25.

Dr. Chandler follows Homer, so far as regards the fates of Æneas and Antenor. He thinks, with great reason, that Eneas afterwards reigned in the Troad, and that, in his per

son, the race of Dardanus was continued. Of course, the foundation of the Æneid is destroyed; and our author shows that the name of Iülus was never heard of, till it was necessary to deduce the Julian race from Æneas, Æneas was, however, soon overpowered by a successive irruption of Eolians, Ionians, and Lydians; and the family was no longer remembered, Sigeum was afterwards taken by the Athenians. -The chapter on the age of Homer we shall select intire.

It is remarkable that Homer, though he has taken notice of two capes or promontories forming a bay before Troy, and had frequent opportunities, has yet never mentioned either of them by name. The reason might be, if they had then appellations in the language of gods or men, that these were not reconcilable, as in some other instances, to the measure of Greek heroic verse. They seem to have been called, not perhaps till long after him, the one Rhaetéum, because the current of the Hellespont made a ripling noise about the cape in entering the bay; the other, Sigéum, from its passing out in silence.

He

Homer, according to some, was of the country, and lived at or about the time of the siege of Troy. We have his own authority for saying, that he was not present when the two armies, after the secession of Achilles, were arrayed for battle; but he might be contemporary with the transaction though not on the spot. mentions the public cisterns near the city, where the Trojan females had been accustomed to wash their linen before the arrival of the Greeks, as still remaining, A tale is related of him, not the only one of the sort which we shall have occasion to notice, that, keeping some sheep by the barrow of Achilles, he prevailed on him by supplication and offerings, to appear; when the insufferable glory which surrounded the hero deprived him of his eye-sight. If I have reasoned rightly in a preceding chapter concerning. Eneas, he flourished during the monarchy which succeeded to that of Priam, and which, if it did not expire before, was subverted or greatly curtailed after the arrival of the Eolians at Lesbos and Cuma,

The predictions, if they may be so termed, of the future kingdom of the Æneada, of the demolition of the Greek entrenchment, and of the death of Achilles, in the Ilias, must be regarded as of a date posterior to their accomplishment. It was easy for Homer to have, in like manner, recorded by anticipation the coming of the Eolian colonists, if it had happened before his time; and as he is silent respecting it, and any later occurrences or transactions, while he holds forth an increasing kingdom in the Troia, recumbent on the house of Æneas, it may be inferred, that those spreading, though not hostile, aliens had either not left their homes, or not reached this country.

We have here a strong argument from the Asian continent in favour of the opinion that Homer was prior as well to the return of the Heracleids into the Peloponnesus, to which he has not even alluded, as to the Æolic migration, which was a consequence of it; since a son of Aneas ruling in the Tröia will co-incide as contem