A noble Peer of mickle trust and power upon the bough of a tree: but it will be found, notwithstanding, on enquiry, that there are very large portions of that most popular Romance, which have no relation to the moon whatsoever. Having thought it right to put the reader in possession of the statements contained in the last few pages, not with any view to discourage him from investigating the ancient writers, but, on the contrary, to aid and assist him in such researches, I now proceed to other matter. It has already been observed in one of the former volumes, that if my pursuits had only had in view to refer this or that hieroglyphic to its proper prototype, or to explain this or that passage in a classical author, without any ulterior object of utility, whatever amusement they might have afforded me personally, I should probably not have offered their results to the public. But as their true and genuine triumph would be to rescue from oblivion such discoveries in arts or in An old and haughty nation, proud in arms; Where his fair offspring, nurs'd in princely lore, science, as might have yielded to the common mutability of human affairs, and become utterly lost amidst the lapse of ages; so from the beginning I have felt myself constantly encouraged by that sort of hope; and though the general object of the treatises repeatedly before mentioned, was only to shew that the ancients knew as much as we do, yet were they strongly marked with the desire of proving likewise that they knew more. I am still sanguine enough to entertain the same hope; and though it might appear to the reader that the best fulfilment of it might be to state here, once for all, those important points in general physics, which are above frequently mentioned to be reserved; yet I trust it may be sufficient to mention, that the ground for such a design is not yet fully cleared; and that there are still some few collateral matters which are necessary to be previously disclosed. Waiving, therefore, those subjects which my own predilections would cer Are coming to attend their father's state 35 tainly lead me first to enter upon, I am induced to encounter a medical one, which, it must be confessed, is one for which, as such, I am least fitted, either by education or otherwise, but as it will be found to be no improper graft upon the preceding pages, as treating of America, and as proving, beyond all doubt, that that continent was accurately known by the ancients, I presume to submit to the reader a Treatise upon their Notions concerning the Pestilence and Plague, which was printed, (but not published,) some years ago, and is now reprinted in an enlarged, and (I hope) amended form: if so presumptuous an undertaking should be thought to call for an apology, the motto which was prefixed to the treatise in its original shape, may perhaps be accepted as such; Λεγετω μεν εν περί αυτό ως εκαςος γιγνωσκει, και ιατρος, και ιδιωτης, αφ' ότω εικος ην γενεσθαι αυτο, και τας αιτίας * January 19, 1805. Lies through the perplex'd paths of this drear wood, The nodding horror of whose shady brows και αφ' ων αν τις σκοπών, είποτε και αυθις επιπεσοι, μαλις' αν έχοι τι προειδώς μη αγνοειν.-Thucydides, Περι τι των Αθηναίων λοιμό. That dreadful pestilence which in the year 1800 desolated the province of Andalusia in Spain, which within these last six months* has committed such ravages at Gibraltar, and along the whole south coast of Spain, and, notwithstanding the winter season, still prevails there and on the north-west coast of Italy, is now admitted, I believe, to be the same with that which, under the name of the yellow fever, has since the year 1793, extended its baleful malignancy with more or less virulence, at different times and places, through a space of near forty degrees square in America and the West Indies. It has * From the original printing of the treatise, Jan. 19, 1805. Threats the forlorn and wand'ring passenger. been a subject of controversy, in regard to many different places, how the disease was first communicated to them; but I do not know that it has ever been considered whether it might not be a native, or endemial, in the places of Europe in question, and in those of America at the same time, as originating in causes operating in all of them alike; nor has it been considered (to my knowledge) whether the ancients, and when or where, were ever afflicted with the same or a similar disease. These are the points intended to be treated; in the course of which, after beginning with a more recent period, the age of Milton, I shall go back to that of Virgil, from thence to that of Homer, and finally, to the times when the temples of Egypt were founded; and I think it will be seen that the same or a similar disease, arising from the same causes and in the same places, prevailed in each of those ages. An attempt will likewise be made to shew what |