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vass,-in theatrical decorations, or in mere designs, we often witness such purity and elegance of taste, while in actual buildings we have generally to regret the absence of these qualities? Is it because architects disdain to study picturesque combinations, whether of form or light and shade; or because in what may be considered mere fancy designs, they give a scope to their taste? Whatever be the reason, we believe it must be acknowledged that the finest specimens of architectural taste will be found buried in portfolios. M. Schinkel at least must be admitted to have been exceedingly fortunate, for he has not only been employed on works of great magnitude, but, as it should seem, has been permitted to follow the impulses of his own genius, unfettered by those restraints which so often mar and cripple excellent designs. There have not, however, been wanting critics who have affected to censure the theatre of Berlin. It has been ob jected that there are too many windows, all the intercolumns between the antæ being glazed; and it is related as a current anecdote, that strangers ask what could possibly induce his majesty to build such a vast greenhouse in such a situation. But a joke is not valid criticism; for the most masterly productions of art may be turned into ridicule by a jest or a sneer. The Museum, which is situated between two branches of the Spree, opposite the royal palace, with the arsenal and new palace bridge on one side, and the cathedral and new Frederick's bridge on the other, will, when completed-which it is expected to be in the course of the present year-be one of the most splendid repositories for works of art, that any city can boast.

The plan of the edifice is a parallelogram, measuring two hundred and seventy-six feet by one hundred and seventy. The principal elevation, namely, that towards the palace, consists of a single colonnade of eighteen Ionic pillars, and two antæ, forming a continued portico twenty-one feet in width.* This is placed upon a solid terrace, or substructure, about twelve feet high, in the centre of which is a flight of steps occupying the width of seven intercolumns; and within the portico, the five middle intercolumns are open, so as to admit a view into the vestibule and staircase, which are separated from the portico itself merely by a dwarf screen, one-fourth the height of the columns, producing thereby a beautiful intricacy and picturesque variety, without at all disturbing the general simplicity of the design. On each side of this inner colonnade, the upper part of the wall of the portico will be decorated with a very large fresco painting, beneath which will be bas-reliefs. The effect of these paintings, as seen between the columns, will produce a very rich and gay effect. Passing through the vestibule we enter a large rotunda, sixty-seven feet in diameter, having a colonnade of twenty Corinthian pillars supporting a gallery communicating with the upper floor. This truly noble and elegant hall is lighted, after the manner of the Pantheon, by a large aperture in the centre of its vaulted dome, which window is twenty-three feet in diameter, and glazed with glass of such extraordinary thickness as to be able to support the weight of a person standing upon it on the outside. Antique statues will be placed here, both between the columns and in niches in the gallery above. Immediately communicating with the rotunda, is a gallery, occupying nearly the whole of the back-front of the museum, two hundred and four feet long by thirty wide; the ceiling of which is supported by twenty columns.

* Above the columns in front is the following inscription, in gold :—' Fredericus Gulibelmus ill. Antiquitatis omnigenæ et artium liberalium Museum constituit, MD,CCC,XXVII,' The word omnigena was not used by the pure latin writers before the time of Apuleius.

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This apartment will be appropriated to the reception of antique statues, busts, vases, and bas-reliefs. In each of the side fronts is a gallery one hundred and twenty-three feet by twenty-nine, and having ten columns. The hall of Egyptian antiquities, and the corresponding one, on the opposite side of the vestibule, which is intended to receive bronzes, terra-cottas, and smaller pieces of sculpture, are of the same dimensions, viz., fifty-three feet by twenty-nine. These two last-mentioned apartments look into inner courts, situated one on each side of the rotunda. There are lesser rooms for the collection of coins, ancient gems, &c. The upper floor, which is arranged so as to form a continued series of galleries, will be entirely appropriated to paintings, and will contain, besides the principal pictures from the palaces of Berlin and Potzdam, the celebrated Giustiniani and Solly collections, the latter of which possesses a number of very fine and undoubted specimens of the early German schools. As the dome does not rise sufficiently above the roof to be rendered a prominent feature externally, the architect has inclosed it entirely by four walls, at the angles of which will be placed colossal groups of Dioscuri, with their horses. The mass of structure thus formed not only gives an importance to the centre of the building, and imparts an air of extraordinary dignity and grandeur to the whole, but corresponds with the general character of the architecture better than even a dome would; at least we cannot help thinking so, notwithstanding that we are strongly prepossessed in favour of those beautiful hemispherical forms. Both this building and the theatre are fully illustrated by a variety of plans, elevations, sections, perspective views, and plates of details: the letter-press descriptions, too, are very satisfactory, and far more complete than what we usually meet with in works of this nature where they are generally little more than mere references to the engravings.

Among the other subjects contained in this publication, are designs for the Wacht-gebaüde, or guard-house, at Berlin; a church in the Spittelmarkte, ditto; the engineer and artillery-school, ditto; Schlosschen Tegel, a villa belonging to Baron von Humboldt; the villa of M. Behrends, the banker; a hunting-seat of Prince Radzivil, at Przygodzice; the pump-room at Aachen; and a design for a musical academy. The last-mentioned of these is, although on a small scale, inferior to none of the rest in originality and beauty. Exquisitely simple, and consisting but of very few features, it nevertheles displays so much character, something so peculiarly novel and attractive in its structure, such exquisite taste, that we know not whether we should not rather give it the preference to any of the other designs.

Bötticher, W. Dr. Geschichte der Chartager nach den Quellen bearbeitet. Mit einer Karte. Berlin. 1827.

SCIPIO shed tears on the ruins of Carthage, on the ashes of this once opulent, powerful, enterprising city. A mind less generous, less noble, would have rejoiced over the fallen fortunes of this dangerous rival of Rome; but Scipio, feeling how perishable human splendour and magnificence are, and how transient all glory and power, might be supposed to have been seized by a gloomy presentiment, that, after the lapse of some centuries, a similar fate would befall Rome. And surely Rome never had a greater enemy than that Cato, who pestered the senate with his Ego quidem censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam. From the destruction of Carthage, begins the decline of Rome.

If Greece distinguished itself chiefly by its splendid productions in arts. and sciences, Rome by its persevering valour, and wisdom in legislation,

Carthage

Carthage must be allowed to rank first for navigation and commerce, or it has to share its glory only with its ancestors, the Phoenicians. The first naval battle which we know of in history, was fought between the Carthaginians and Etruscans on one side, and the Phoceans on the other, in the year 536 before Christ. The Carthaginians became, by their victory over the Phoceans, the first naval power in the Mediterranean; they occupied Sardinia, and the present capital of Sardinia, Cagliari, is a colony of this people. They made a descent upon Sicily, where the Phoenicians had already settlements; Palermo (Panormus) was founded by the same nation. They got possession of the Balearic islands (Majorca and Minorca) and the Pytiuses: Melita (Malta) and Gaulos (Gozzo) offered to them convenient harbours, and staple places for their trade. They followed the Phoenicians to Spain, and enriched themselves by its silver mines; in the ocean they occupied Madeira. They bought tin from the Britons, and gathered amber from the shores of the Baltic. Their commercial and colonial policy, their civil institutions, their economy, their religion, manners, and language, their naval expeditions, deserve our attention; and the unfortunate issue of their struggle with Rome cannot make us forget that Carthage has produced Annibal, the greatest warrior of the ancient world.

In the work before us, we possess, for the first time, something like a history of this nation. The first period of it begins with the foundation of Carthage till the wars with Syracuse, from 878-480; the second, from the beginning of the wars with Syracuse till the beginning of the wars with Rome, from 480-264; the third, brings the history down to the destruction of Carthage, 264-146; and a final chapter treats of the Roman Carthage, and its destruction by the Arabs 706 after Christ. All the materials have been most carefully collected, the authorities duly weighed, and the narrative is easy and fluent. We agree with the author that the story of Regulus having been put to death by the Carthaginians, is a fable, since he died, according to the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, a natural death, although otherwise we have no reason to give the Carthaginians much credit for their humanity; but we disbelieve the burning glasses of Archimedes, because the silence of Polybius is, upon this point, of greater weight than a positive assertion of Zonaras; and lastly, we must suppose, that the author has not seen the second edition of Niebuhr's history of Rome, or he would not have mentioned Laurentum instead of Aricia, among the towns which were included in the first commercial treaty between Rome and Carthage, in the year 509 before Christ.

Tallmerayer, J. Ph. Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt. Munchen. 1827.

GIBBON and Ducange are the only historians who have given us some information about the empire of Trapezunt, and they even, have only skimmed the subject. The history of Trapezunt was considered, like the country itself, which is situated in the inmost recesses of the Euxine, dark and impenetrable; and all we have heard of its past magnificence, of its wealth, of the beauty of its females, such as they are extolled in the romances of the middle ages, was supposed to deserve little more credit than common Oriental tales. The author of this book, a professor of history at Landshut, and a pupil of the learned Professor Ast, the editor of Plato, has had the good fortune to meet, in the course of his historical researches, with the chronicle of Michael Panaretos, a Trapezuntian historiographer, which, together with the Greek manuscripts of Cardinal Bessarion, forms a part of the library of S. Marco, at Venice. This chronicle, of which Gibbon knew nothing, contains important information from the year 1204 till 1350, on

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the names, age, and reign of the emperors of Trapezunt, on their family con nexions, and wars, and on the revolutions which have taken place in the palace, and becomes still more rich in genealogical and chronological references, from the year 1350 till 1382. Without this chronicle, it would probably have been a hopeless task to write a history of Trapezunt. The author obtained also the support of Hase at Paris, of the royal library, who copied for him the journal of Eugenius, the nomophylax of Constantinople, who had made a journey to Trapezunt; and the celebrated S. de Sacy sent him extracts from the Persian historian Scherefeddin Ali. The author, an Oriental and Greek scholar himself, and versed in most modern languages, has done every thing to render his work complete and perfect.

Trapezunt is first spoken of by Xenophon, about 400 before Christ, and is mentioned as a splendid town in the time of Mithridates. The period of its foundation is unknown, but it was of Pelasgic origin. Trapezus in the Tauric Chersones, in Arcadia, and that on the Hellespont were colonies of this Caucasian Trapezunt. Pausanias, Arcad. 27, mentions that the Trapezuntians of Arcadia destroyed their town and returned to Trapezus in Pontus, when Epaminondas wanted to force them to come to the new built town of Megalopolis, in order to strengthen it against the Spartans, whose power he wished to break for ever. The Arcadians were well received in Pontus; Trapezus preserved its municipal freedom under the Romans, and Pliny calls it oppidum liberum, and Mela, urbem illustrem. It was a flourishing commercial town. Zosimus calls it πόλιν μεγάλην καὶ πολυάνθρωπον. Conquered by the Goths in the time of P. Lic. Valerian, it lost its wealth and its freedom under Diocletian and Constantine, whence Amm. Marcellinus calls it only oppidum non obscurum.

Under Justinian it became a provincial town of the Pontic Eparchia, of which Neo-Cæsarea was the chief town, and its importance grew during the wars of the Byzantines with the Persians and Arabs. And afterwards it became the metropolis of the Thema (new name for Eparchia) of Chaldia. The præfects of Trapezunt styled themselves princes in the 11th century. When the Seldschucks conquered nearly all Anatolia, and founded the empire of Iconium, Trapezunt maintained itself independent, until it was conquered by the famous queen of Georgia, Thamar. The death of the emperor Andronicus at Constantinople, (who by no means deserved the high praises bestowed upon him by our author,) brought his daughter, with the princes Alexisand David, and a number of other noble fugitives, to Trapezunt; and afterthe conquest of Constantinople by the Franks (1203), the prince Alexis made himself master of Trapezunt, and founded the dynasty of the Comnenes. Our author maintains that he assumed the title of emperor, or Bariùs, whilst Gibbon and Ducange, on the authority of Vincentius Belvacensis, Speculum Historiale ad annum 1240, assert, that before the Comnene John, 1274, the princes of Trapezunt were satisfied with the title of zuges, Dominus. We confess that the evidence brought forward against Gibbon does not seem to us to be conclusive; for their not being acknowledged as emperors at Constantinople could not have prevented Joinville, a Frenchman, about 1253, to call a prince of Trapezunt emperor, if they actually had assumed that title; and as it cannot be denied that Alexis solicited the alliance of Baldwin and Henry of Flanders against Lascaris of Nicæa, it may be supposed that he would not have assumed a title which would evidently have displeased them. In general, we believe, a historian ought to hesitate before he contradicts positive contemporary evidence. But Gibbon is certainly wrong in maintaining that the title Μέγα-κομνηνός was derived from the stature of Alexis.

The conquests of the Trapezuntian princes in Anatolia were soon lost. Protected

Protected as the Trapezuntians were by high, rugged, and inaccessible mountains, they remained unmolested during the first invasion of the Mongols, 1263; but our author shows against Gibbon, from a letter in Marini Sanuti, Vite dei Duchi di Venezia, which had escaped Gibbon, that Manuel, emperor of Trapezunt, was obliged, 1402, to do homage to Timur in person, and to furnish twenty vessels for the war against Bajazet. During this_time Trapezunt had become a flourishing commercial town, although the Turkmann emirs of Sinope sometimes rendered the navigation in the Euxine sea insecure. These emirs of Sinope did at that time in the Black Sea what Algiers and Tunis still practise in the Mediterranean. A Genoese, and afterwards a Venetian factory at Trapezunt carried on a successful trade with India. Trapezunt was then the staple place, the centre of commerce between the orient and the occident. The costly merchandise of the countries of Asia to the east of the Black Sea, to India and China, were heaped up in the magazines and the bazars of Trapezunt. The vessels of all the western nations appeared on their coasts, for the purposes of exchange and traffic; gold stuffs from Bagdad and Cairo, silk and cotton manufactures from India and Sina (g' výμaтa τāv žāv), pearls and gems from Golconda and Ceylon, cloth from Cilicia, Flanders, and Italy, glass and steel. manufactures from Germany, hemp and honey from Mingrelia, wheat from the Tauric Chersonesus, scarlet from Florence, and, in short, the produce of art and labour of Pisa, Florence, and Venice filled the markets of Trapezunt. The concourse of strangers was immense; a great number settled there, and all languages, costumes, and religions of the trading nations of Europe and Asia, together with those of the natives, could, according to Bessarion, be distinguished at Trapezunt. Between 1458-62 the Trapezuntian empire was destroyed by Mahomed II. shortly after the conquest of Constantinople. It lasted about 258 years. Its history is, on the whole, only a fac-simile of the history of the Byzantine empire. The Trapezuntians spoke Greek with great elegance, as they conceived, and this was their chief merit; for a bigoted degenerated people, weak voluptuous princes, a turbulent, ambitious, ignorant clergy, were seated in a terrestrial paradise, among groves of lemons and olives, in the shade of cypresses, amidst the luxuriance of vines and flowers, resounding with the sweet lay of the nightingales. The vine and the cherry-tree were brought from this country to Europe; Kerasus was the second town of the empire. The mild climate, the mountain air, and the cool transparent water produced that fine Caucasian blood, which rendered the beauty of the Trapezuntian princesses so celebrated that the palace of the Grand-Comnenes was often filled with enamoured suitors from Constantinople and all parts of Asia, and Servia, and Mitylene.

The author combines with profound historical researches a lively spirited style, and enters into many interesting details, especially with reference to commerce, and shows at the same time that he has contemplated history with the mind of a philosopher.

(The narrative of our author differs in some points from that in Hammer's History of the Osmanic Empire, vol. ii., p. 58.)

Hammer, J. v. Geschichte der Osmannischen Reiches. Erster und Zweiter Band. Von der Gründung der Osmannischen Reiches bis zur Eroberung von Constantinopel, 1300-1453. Pest. 1827.

It is superfluous to allude, during the present state of affairs in the East, to the importance of this work. It may also be acknowledged, that no European is better qualified to write a history of the Turkish empire than Hammer. For the last thirty years he has been occupied in collecting the

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