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For a full account of the antiquities, medals, inscriptions, and other monuments of Grecian art, brought over by his lord. ship, we refer our readers to the work itself.

We congratulate our country on this important acquisition, which will, no doubt, be secured to the nation by Parliament. We hail with rapture the prospect of greater exertions, in procuring similar collections, than have hitherto distinguished this country. We have often expressed a wish to see the establishment of a national museum in this metropolis, which, in painting, sculpture, and other productions of ancient and modern art, would vie with the treasures of the plunderers of the world, We look back with regret and mortification on the opportunities which we have lost, of forming a matchless monument of the taste and magnificence of the British empire. We cannot recollect without indignation the sale of the HOUGHTON Collection to Russia. We lament that Lord CAVAN'S project of conveying to England the celebrated Egyptian column, to which the inhabitants of Alexandria had given their consent, was not carried into execution. We have been, told, and we wish the assertion could be officially contradicted, that in 1796, when the French showed their design of transporting works of art from Italy, some members of the Dillettanti Society, who were in Rome, made a proposal to our government, if the sum of 20,000l. was put conditionally in their possession, to purchase and bring over to this country,the VENUS DE MEDICIS, the APOLLO BELVIDERE, and the FARNESE HERCULES; but that this sum was refused !--- We conceive that a hundred times that sum would have been well laid out in an object, which would have rendered London the focus of the arts. When will the Minister arise, who shall have the taste and the policy to propose to Parliament the employment of one poor million, in establishing a national repository of arts, amid the hundreds of millions that are expended on objects of doubtful success!

NOTICE

Of a CHART of the STREAM of TIME, or FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATION of UNIVERSAL HISTORY; Translated from the German by MR. BELL, Jun.-Vernor and Hood.

1810.

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SENSIBLE that this Chart is more useful than Priestley's . two Charts of Biography and History, we trust that the plate of it will soon require to be retouched, and to be again and deeply engraved in which event we would modestly advise the young author to make two very easy additions to it. The first relates to Britain. The German editor, probably, published under French influence, or (as probable a case) under an absurd impression, that there is no historical ground for the belief of the Welsh, or Celtic antiquities; and no authenticity in the reputed era of the Welsh historical triads, of the numerous Welsh coins coeval with the emperors, Nero and Constantine; coins, on which the Welsh words are well preserved, and the Welsh mythology, or Druidism, is most distinguishably marked! Hence the German, in the Chart, has limited the origin of Britain and of Wales to the Saxon ages! A second impression of the plate ought to restore to Celtic Britain its real literary honors; and to assign their respective eras to the British Bishops mentioned in the coeval history of Eusebius under Constantine the Great ;-- to the heretic Pelagius, or Morgan, whose writings were answered by St. Austin;- to the Welsh founders of the oldest Welsh Churches, Abbies, and Monasteries, whose lives are recorded and whose periods are decisively fixed, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in his Notes on Girald of Wales, and yet more by Owen in his Cambrian Biography, the ablest of the Welsh scholars and the most accomplished of their Lexicographers: as a proof of the early refinement and learning of the Druids, we refer our readers, as well as Mr. Bell, to the Essay on the Identity of Albion with the Hyperborean Island of Diodo

rus in the 5th and 6th Nos. of the Classical Journal. This addition may be easily made by Mr. Bell, by drawing a cir cuitous line of a red color from his Britain of the Saxon ages to the highest and most ancient period, of which his map admits; that is to the year 1000, or 1500, after the flood of Noah: such a red line would happily designate the Britanni, toto orbe divisi, the quasi novus orbis of the Roman writers,the Mosaic Isles of the Gentiles, or the Nations, and the Sanscrit Sacred Isles of the West.

Our second remark will relate to Japan, and to India. The German Editor had omitted China, that vast empire, in the list of nations. The wiser Englishman was warned every morning, to admit from gratitude the land of Tscha, as the Arabs spell that herb and tree: the English Editor ought to have equally admitted a new stream for the populous and insular empire of Japan; containing 30 millions of souls, and described, with its early authors, and its Sinto or postdiluvian creed, or religion, by Montanus, and Ogilby, his translator; by Du Halde in his China; by a Latin History of it, by a hundred Portuguese Missionaries in it, by Komp. fer's two folio Volumes, by Thunberg, by Titsing, Benyowski, Perouse, Captain Cooke, and the Reverend W. Tooke; by Broughton and by a later Russian Navigator in A. D. 1804, 5, 9, and 10. As an English merchant, or as a linguist, Mr. Bell ought also to correct the German Editor upon India. The latter has foolishly and ignorantly limited the antiquities of India to the era of the Mogul empire! An Englishman, (enlightened by the Indoo chronology, and by the Sanscrit Archæology of the Asiatic Transactions; by the Rev. T. Maurice's Indian History, and his profound, yet elegant and classical, Antiquities of India; by the verbal and literal transla tions of Sir Wm. Jones, of Gladwin, of Halhed, of the Ramayuna and the Maha Baarat, or The Great War, of Colebrooke, and of the missionaries in India) ought to have restored to the Indoo and to the Sanscrit authors, (some of them coeval with Alexander the Great, and others with Augustus, and many with our king Alfred) the honors of real and authentic Antiquity. Mr. Bell, we trust, will excuse this freedom of advice in his friends; and will, in the second cutting of his

plate, extend the curved line of Hindostan to the top of his Chart, even to a century prior to his stream of China. In such a curved line, Mr. Bell should insert the venerable names of coeval authors, with their dates, who visited and described the India of the Greeks; I mean the travels of Marco Polo in A. D. 1278, those of Rubriquis in 1253, of Rabbi Benjamin in 1185, of Renaudot's two Mahometans in 898 and 833, of our Alfred's Embassy to Prester John in 872, of Cosmas in 560, of the Byzantine Historians quoted by Gibbon, of Ebn Haucal, the geographer, of Timur and of Zengis, in their Histories by Sheriff-Eddin—Alix, and by De La Croix; of Ptolemy, Arrian, Strabo, and Nearchus, with the hundred classics so judiciously arranged, and so ably explained, by Dr. Vincent; who, like the immortal Dr. Barrow, exhausts every subject, on which he undertakes to write. Mr. Bell would add authenticity to the solid antiquities of the Brachman, or Bramin Indoos, by referring as the earliest authorities to one verse in Esther, to the phrase "the Children of the East" in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles, and even in the Book of Genesis. If such a revealed work, even as the Scriptures, be rejected by the infidel, the above classical authorities of Indoo science and art will, at least, confirm the surprising antiquity assigned to Indostan, and to the Penjab. The Classical Journal will, in an early number, recapitulate all the grand features of nature; that is, the rivers, hills, cities, bays, and promontories of India, mentioned in the Sanscrit and the Greek. Their close identity of names will convince, we hope, the most incredulous opponent, and will prove to Mr. Bell the necessity of the additions, which we have so boldly and, perhaps, so presumptuously advised,

ANTIQUITIES.

The restoration of the architectural monuments of ancient Rome is rapidly advancing under the auspices of the French Emperor. The two beautiful temples of Vesta and of Fortuna Virilis, which are still in a great measure standing between the great sewer and

the ancient Bridge of the Senate House, have been cleared from the rubbish with which they were surrounded. The shops and small houses, which hid them from sight, have also been demolished.

The three principal chambers in the Baths of Titus have also been at the same time cleared out, and exposed to view. These have been long the admiration of strangers, and furnish a correct idea of the famous grottoes of Ludio and Arellio, which have since been most elegantly imitated by Raphael, in the Vatican. The remains of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, of the Theatre of Marcellus, of the Portico of Octavius, of the Temples of Concord, and of Jupiter Stator, have also been repaired.

An antique statue has lately been dug out of the ruins of the Church of St. Laurence, at Grenoble. It is of stone, one foot six inches in height, and represents a man habited in a long toga, with a cloak or mantle crossed over his breast. The hair is long, and in this respect the figure resembles the prophets and evangelists, as painted in the illuminated manuscripts of the 11th and 12th centuries. The right arm is wanting; from the left hand hangs a scroll with the following inscription:

DIX I

SAIAS

EGR

DIET

VII

A DE

AD
ESS

The inscription being mutilated, the true reading ought to be; Dixit Isaias egredietur virga de radice Jesse; being the first verse of the 11th chapter of Isaiah. Hence we may infer, that the statue was intended to represent that Prophet. The church was built about the eighth, and rebuilt in the twelfth, century; when the above statue seems to have been made. The workmanship is beautiful in the extreme.

The unrolling and explanation of the MSS. found in the Herculancum, are pursued with much industry by Messrs. Rosini, Scotti, and Pessette. They have, under the patronage of the Government, published lately some fragments of a Latin Poem, upon the war between Mark Antony and Augustus, and a considerable part of the second book of Epicurus on Nature. The above Gentlemen do not despair, even yet, of finding the whole treatise of this author. There has also been committed to the press a moral work of

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