Gentleman's Magazine,' (one of whom treats, by-the-bye, not of theatres, but of an amphitheatre, and measures the seats at Nismes, where there are not any,) he has the courage to extract very largely from De la Guilletierre's Travels. He could not possibly have made a more appropriate choice. We know of no book of travels to which we can so well compare his own as to this of De la Guilletierre. Dr. Spon published, so long ago as 1679, a catalogue of 112 errors in that little volume, replete as it is with disquisitions and learning, after the manner of Mr. Buckingham. One broad line of distinction we must indeed admit, and that is, that on the one hand it has been pretty satisfactorily made out that no such person as this De la Guilletierre ever existed; whereas the house of Briggs, at Alexandria, we believe, and Mr. Bankes, could furnish evidence of the reality of Mr. Buckingham.*

The ground-plan given of Jerash is founded on a tracing obtained from Mr. Bankes at Nazareth; but so little did the borrower comprehend what he copied, that, hasty and incorrect as the original necessarily was, its errors are multiplied tenfold, both on the general plate, and in those of separate edifices, which are only enlarged from it. There is a zeal for deception in this altogether extraordinary, for the alteration is systematic, and not accidental. In this general plan, when reduced to the size of a quarto page, it was found that the individual buildings would make but little figure if kept to their proportions, and perhaps disappoint expectation. The precaution has therefore been taken of exaggerating all in a twofold and threefold, and some even in a sixfold proportion, and upwards. He has himself given us a scale for detecting this, by telling us that the length of the city is about 5000 feet. If what he is pleased to call the greatest temple (which is, in reality, the second only) be compared with this scale, it will ap

6

*It may possibly have been the adroit manner in which the supposed traveller' represents himself to have made use of some Englishman whom he met, and joined company with, that has so charmed our author as to make him almost identify him with himself during several pages. 'My fellow-travellers supplied me, and all things went on very well, and very honourably for me: however I would needs have it thought that I borrowed it only, though perhaps they might have given it as well.'—Athens, Ancient and Modern, by M. de la Guilletierre, p. 6.

Of his plate of inscriptions he says, these inscriptions were given by Mr. Burckhardt to Mr. Bankes, as well as to myself.' This we know to be totally false, so far as respects himself, and that he obtained them only from a transcript in the margin of Mr. Bankes's ground-plan, who, not wishing to hazard the loss of the originals in a dangerous journey, had copied them on that paper for the purpose of collating them on the spot. It happened (as we also know) that, from many inscriptions belonging to Jerash, given to him by Mr. Burckhardt, Mr. Bankes extracted four or five only, and these are the very same that are here given; whilst of the remainder, which equally belong to Jerash, and were equally communicated by Mr. Burckhardt, not one makes its appear

ance.

pear

pear to be of larger dimensions than any existing temple in the world; and some of the arched vaultings in the bath would prove, by the same proportion, to be at least one hundred and fifty feet in the span. And yet this writer seriously tells us, in his preface, that he is sure that Mr. Bankes's liberality' would have 'admitted of' his drawings being brought before the public in such a work as this!*

We now proceed towards the site of another great mass of ruins, called at present Oomkais. In the way thither we are told of a place named Abil; this, it was suggested to Mr. Buckingham, might be Abile, and he, having never before heard of any other Abile but that of Lysanias, mentioned by St. Luke, concludes, of course, that the Abilene was hereabouts. His proofs of this are most unfortunate, for he himself cites a passage which places Chalchis in the Abilene: now Chalchis, we know, was in the Hollow Syria, under Mount Libanus. But there is not, in fact, any position more certainly ascertained than that of Ábila of Lysanias. It stood upon the river Barrady, on the road between Damascus and Baalbec, where its tombs are still to be seen; and Mr. Bankes has brought home a long inscription, (not observed by former travellers,) copied from the face of the rock there, in which the Abilenians record the making of a new road to their city. The very circumstance of its being termed Abila of Lysanias' might have wakened a suspicion that there were two of the same name. The other was the Abila of the Decapolis; (so styled in a curious inscription in Greek and Palmyrene, in Lord Bessborough's collection;) it is enumerated in Pliny's list of the ten cities, and there can be little doubt that the Abil, upon which all the common-places belonging to another city are thrown away, is really that Abila. We believe that our author is only retailing a conjecture of Dr. Seetzen, when he suggests that the district now called Adjeloon may probably answer to the Gaulonitis of the Romans. He is unlucky in what he borrows; for we apprehend this to be a mistake: Adjeloon is probably within the ancient Batanea ; Gaulonitis, we conceive, lay farther to the north; and that the modern district of Jolan, which is extensive, and includes some pretty considerable places, is more likely to represent it.

Mr. Bankes made, we understand, three subsequent visits at different times to Jerash, during one of which he was enabled to continue there during several days; and, with the co-operation of Captains Irby and Mangles, R. N. who were with him, and indefatigable in their desire of rendering him assistance, was enabled to lay down very accurate and detailed plans of every part of the ruins, so as to supersede what was hastily done in his first expedition.-But without this, we must be permitted to say, that the work of Mr. Buckingham pleads strongly for the publication of this gentleman's papers and researches upon these interesting provinces, in order that such wretched and surreptitious substitutes as those before us may be done away.

We

We now reach the consummation of Mr. Buckingham's blun ders. The ruins of Oomkais he gives us for those of Gamala. What obliquity of intellect could have led him to such a conclusion, when Dr. Seetzen had already given the place its right name, it is impossible even to conjecture. He cites a number of second-hand passages, and they every one make against him! The case is so clear, that it is hardly worth stating the grounds of it as a question. Gadara stood high, the Hieromax ran below it, and at its feet were hot baths, so celebrated as to be considered second to none, excepting to those of Baiæ: its remains were likely to exhibit traces of magnificence, since it was restored by Pompey the Great in honour of one of his freed-men. It is not possible for any remains to answer all these conditions more exactly than those at Oomkais do: two theatres are in the body of the city, and one below, near the bath, which Mr. Buckingham contrived not to see.

Gamala was situated on the lake of Gennazareth, and on the opposite side of it from Tarichea. The Hieromax cannot, therefore, have flowed near it, nor are hot springs any where spoken of as connected with it: we read little of any other edifices there except its walls. The vestiges of Gamala might be expected therefore to offer little besides a steep and fortified site. Mr. Bankes found them in one of his subsequent journies, (not at Phik, where Dr. Seetzen had conjectured them to be, but) at El Hossn, a remarkable but abandoned position on the east side of the lake. The remains are considerable, but not splendid.

Such

We cannot help feeling a sort of pity for a traveller who can have wandered through the singular sepulchres of Oomkais, and have bathed in its hot waters, unconscious that those were the Tombs, and this the Bath of Gadara. For doubtless it was among these very tombs that the Demoniac of the Gospel resided, and that our Lord performed his miracle; and in this very bath it is that the strange scene of incantation is laid in the Life of Iamblicus, by which he is said to have called up the spirits of Eros and Anteros; a circumstance which our traveller is so far from knowing, that he gravely asserts his own belief that baths near to Gadara are not mentioned by any author. (p. 434.) Had he but looked into one half of those whom he cites, without going any farther, he must have known better. Oomkais becomes thus a field of most interesting and varied associations; adorned by the rival of Cæsar, and, by a strange coincidence, the scene of one of the most remarkable miracles which the Gospel attests, and of one of the latest which paganism in its dotage pretended to. But all this was lost on Mr. Buckingham: for he, forsooth, supposed himself at Gamala! We might here safely have dismissed him,

VOL. XXVI. NO. LII.

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did he not seek out one more opportunity for a blunder before he recrosses the Jordan, in boldly assuring us that Sumuk (Samek) is Tarichea. Tarichea it cannot possibly be, as it stands on the wrong part of the lake, and on the wrong side of the river,-for we must warn the reader that Samek is improperly placed on the map; it really lying a considerable distance EASTWARD from the issue of the river out of the lake, upon the very centre of the southern shore. It is a small modern village.

The real site of Tarichea Mr. Bankes both visited and mapped in another of his excursions; it lies as described by Josephus, both with respect to Tiberias and Gamala, and has now no inhabitants. It is a highly interesting fact with regard to it, that the trench which the Jewish general and historian dug, and has described, in order to insulate the city, can still be clearly traced, and is filled with the waters of the Jordan to this day when they rise. Other parts of Josephus's details of the Jewish war, Mr. Bankes was lucky enough to discover to be surprizingly illustrated at Tiberias; the walls built there by the historian remain, excepting precisely that part which we are told was razed at the back of the camp of Vespasian, which was near the hot springs of Emmaus:-But we are wandering from the matter before us; for it was not in this expedition that Mr. Bankes ascertained those points, and consequently Mr. Buckingham remained as ignorant of them as his precursors; had it been otherwise, all this would, doubtless, have made a part of Mr. Buckingham's pretensions to 'contribute (as he terms it) to the common fund of human knowledge.'

One word more upon Mr. Buckingham's plates, and we have done with him. The paragraph in which he announces thern in his Preface is most warily drawn up. MANY of the vignettes are from original drawings made after sketches taken on the spot.' (p. xx.) He carefully abstains from stating which of them, by whom made, and when: thus if his reader be deceived, the author has provided a retreat for his conscience, in not having hazarded the 'lie direct.' In a subsequent page we find the following burst of honest indignation' in his animadversions on the plates in an edition of Maundrel's journal. Some well-meaning friend, or some interested booksellers, subsequently caused these drawings to be composed from the printed descriptions and charts of the places they profess to represent, and thus embellished, they thought, while they really disgraced the book. This is the more probable, as no name is given either of the painter or engraver. Such a practice, however, cannot be too severely reprehended; às these plates only give false impressions, which are avowedly worse than none at all! Who would suppose it possible, after this,

that

that no name should be given either of the painter or engraver' on any one of the plates in Mr. Buckingham's volume!-Yet so it is. As the practice,' however, is so 'reprehensible,' we will do him the kindness to mention that most of them are copies from the prints in Le Bruyn's Travels, published more than a century ago. These, then, are the vignettes from original drawings, made after sketches taken on the spot-whether by Mr. Buckingham in 1815, or by Le Bruyn in 1681, matters not, of course. It is true that this confusion of widely distant periods may lead to a few 'false impressions,' as, for instance, where Tyre (chap. ii.) is presented to us as a mere heap of ruins, (which it was when Le Bruyn visited it,) though it is now a flourishing place; or where Jaffa appears (p. 144.) as it then was, an open scattered village, though it is now a walled city; still, however, as it is probable that Le Bruyn's sketches were really made on the spot, Mr. Buckingham's word is saved! As to all the remaining views (which do not exceed three or four,) it is quite certain that not one of them was made upon the spot; though whether taken out of other books, or composed' in the manner the interested booksellers' (greatly to the scandal of our author) treated poor Mr. Maundrell, we cannot determine the fraud, however, is as clumsy as it is gross, for had we never met with Le Bruyn, nor suspected our author to be no draughtsman, his own descriptions would have enabled us to pronounce that the views do not belong to his work.*

The map is D'Anville's, with all its errors; for it is one of the least correct of the productions of that extraordinary genius: and the ground-plans of Jerusalem are taken out of a translation of Josephus. Upon the whole, we are compelled to say of this dull and tiresome volume, which we have gone through with more care than it deserved, that the plates are worthy of the letterpress, and both of them, we verily believe, of the author.

So much for Buckingham!'

ART. VI.—The Art of instructing the Infant Deaf and Dumb. By John Pauncefort Arrowsmith. 8vo. London.

IT

T is difficult, if not impossible, at this time, to decide with certainty when or where the first experiment was made to instruct the deaf and dumb to utter articulate sounds. We may

The very first vignette offers an amusing instance of this. In describing the vessel in which he had embarked, he says, 'small as it was, it HAD THREE masts;' he then enlarges upon the rigging and appearance of them, and boldly subjoins, See the vignette at the head of this chapter.'-p. 3. We accordingly turned to it, and found two vessels represented there, of which the one has one mast only, and the other two! It would be hard however to blame M. Le Bruyn for not having represented Mr. Buckingham's boat with fidelity.

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believe,