teau St. Angelo, from the statue of St. Michael, which they have erected on the top, in the place of that of Adrian.

The only grand mausolea, except the above, of which there are any considerable remains, are the tombs of Caius Cestius and of Cecilia Metella. The pyramid of Caius Cestius, who was only a private citizen, is built in imitation of the famous pyramids of Egypt, and, as it is the best preserved, so it is in my mind one of the greatest beauties of Rome. It was raised in three hundred and thirty days to fulfil a direction in his will, and his ashes were placed in it. It is clothed wholly with white marble of a foot thickness. It is quadrangular or four sided; is one hundred and thirteen feet high, and eighty nine feet wide at each base. It is a simple object which, you will recollect yourself, does not admit of ornament. Indeed it repels it. Its simplicity and grandeur are its charms. The tomb of Metella was erected to the wife of Crassus. It is of a spherical form, and is one of the most splendid, magnificent, and best preserved monuments of Rome. It is eighty nine feet and an half in diameter, of course two hundred and seventy feet round. The most surprising circumstances about it are the monstrous size of the stones with which it was built, and the inconceivable thickness of the walls, which I should think are about thirty feet.

It is evident that this lady's friends were resolved to render the monument as immortal as human works can be. So far they have succeeded. It is now strong enough to endure many thousand years. It is also very beautiful, and does honour to their taste, but alas, alas!! how vain are human exertions, the sarcophagus (the cinerary receptacle of the ancients) which contained this lady's ashes, and for which alone this mighty fabrick was erected, is gone to grace the collection of an antiquary!!! I had seen it at the Palais Farnese before I saw the tomb. You will repeat with me the old but ever interesting adage, "Vain is human grandeur !!"

NAPLES, DECEMBER 27th. 1804.

The reception which we have experienced at Naples has been more agreeable than that we have met with in any other city of Europe. Two American families, and a large English society, render the residence in this city extremely agreeable to those of us who do not speak well any foreign language. At the house of Mr. F. a great banker of this place, who married a most beautiful and accomplished American lady, Miss H. you meet the first society in Europe. I say in Europe, because it is the fashion in every country of Europe to travel to Naples to pass the winter under milder skies. In a party last evening we met two Russian princesses and their children, a German prince and princess, a Polish nobleman, several Dutch gentlemen of fortune, the ambassadresses of Portugal, of Great Britain, and of Spain, an English nobleman, English navy and army officers and private gentlemen, a Corsican lady of rank, several princes, nobility and gentry of this kingdom. It

must be acknowledged, that if the party was not pleasant, it could not be attributed to want of variety. It might be thought, perhaps, that there would be the confusion of Babel, but it is not so. But two languages were spoken generally, the French and English.

All Europeans speak French fluently, which is the grand secret of the influence France has acquired and maintained throughout Europe. I am surprised that more has not been attributed to this cause; but in cases of this sort, men are fond of searching for remote and deep causes, and often overlook the more simple and operative ones.

If Great Britain could succeed to make the English the court language of Europe, and bring the French into discredit, it would do more towards the annihilation of French power, than her arms or money can effect.

The truth is, that people are fond and proud of speaking a foreign language; it gratifies their pride of literature. Even the Italians, though they hate the French, speak their language among each other in fashionable circles. A Frenchman is at home every where; he finds his language, his dress, his cookery, his dancing, the literature of his country praised and admired in every country. What an inducement to intrigue! What means are furnished for the success of it!

In proof of the soundness of this opinion, I can quote Great Britain, which is the only country in Europe where the French language is seldom spoken, and where we find accordingly that the means of gaining an ascendancy are more limited. If the English had as universally known the French language as the Germans and Italians do, I believe Great Britain would have been revolutionized in 1795.

I see by our late papers, that although you have had some partial successes in federalism, yet the general cause of jacobinism is progressing with sure and unvaried steps; that neither good sense, sound arguments, or experience, are sufficient to teach our unhappy fellow citizens the folly of the doctrine, which our patriotick bawlers are preaching, and which are so flattering, yet surely destructive to the happiness of the people.

I assure you, nothing appears so absurd to a man who travels in Europe as this conduct. At the very moment when all the world are awaking out of their recent lethargy, when all the ridiculous cant of equality, and perfectability, and soundness of human reason, are exploded; when the very name of jacobin is detested in France, England, Italy, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland; when the name of an innovator, or democrat, is considered as synonimous with knave, robber, depredator of private property, destroyer of publick peace, reviler of religion; when every such disturber is hunted like a wild beast; we see and hear these exploded follies and vices still held in honour in our country; we notice the champions and admirers of Robespierre and Marat in full credit, and even in power.

What I say of the present temper of Europe, is not declamation or hearsay; it is founded on positive remark. What I have noticed of the temper of our own jacobins is equally so. The A's, and other bawling patriots of our country, were the unqualified eulogists of Robespierre, and I recollect the introduction of one of Robespierre's speeches in the Chronicle with something equal to "Holy Robespierre! Pray for us." If these very Americans, friends of France, but better friends of mad confusion, were to visit any of the continental countries of Europe, and their political principles were known, I am sure they would speedily receive their exeat regno, or their mittimus to a more limited place of liberty. But I derive some consolation from the present condition of Europe. I cannot believe that our people will be willing to hazard, by destructive measures, a state of things which the history of all Europe teaches them must terminate in the worst of despotism, and in the utter confusion of the promoters of it.

ANECDOTES OF PUBLICK SCHOOLS AND LITERARY ESTABLISIIMENTS IN ALL NATIONS.

AMONG the Magi and the Bramins, who were the first that united the profession of religion with that of the sciences, temples and woods were the places in which they assembled their disciples, and where they infused a due mixture of mystery into their religious and philosophical dogmas. The library of Alexandria, which was called by the Egyptians "The Magazine of Remedies for the Soul,” was not so ancient as that of Sicyon. Berytus and Benares boasted of their schools; the latter is esteemed by Voltaire the most ancient university in the world. Among all these nations, the ruins of observatories, meridians, and other establishments for instruction, are still discoverable. Moschus the Phoenician gave to the world the first example of the leader of a sect. It is believed that the Jews set apart to the cultivation of letters one particular place, which they called "the City of Letters." Urbs Literarum. Solomon erected at Jerusalem his college called Domus Sapientiae, "The house of Wisdom," which contained a publick library, and, according to some writers, a cabinet of natural history. Susa had a royal library; Crete a Lyceum, the rival of that at Athens. Cicero mentions an ancient academy among the Rhodians. The law called by the Romans, Lex Rhodia, De Jactu Retium, was borrowed by them from the maritime code of those islanders. Eumenes, king of Pergamus, was a protector of letters; and the library of his royal city has been compared by some historians to that of Alexandria. It has been pretended that the first academies were of Egyptian establishment; that the Egyptians had private colleges where the priests employed themselves in studying the mysterious operations of nature, and the art of magick; that the mysteries of Eleusis were derived from one of these collegiate establishments. Meyer, who wrote a history of these secret assemblies, speaks of the college of

Samothrace, the members of which believed that they enjoyed the peculiar assistance of the gods throughout all the trials of life; of the college of Persian Magi, who knew how to perform very extraordinary things, and from whom Apollonius Tyanaeus derived his knowledge of sorcery; of the college of Bramins who commanded the elements, and called down rain and tempests, winds and thunder, at their will; of the Celtick college of Druids, who also penetrated into the secrets of Nature, and who, as some say, were able to predict future events; of the Roman college of augurs, whose mystick ceremonies imposed the belief of prophetick powers. The school of Pythagoras is the earliest specimen we have of a college among the Greeks. The Pythagoreans lived in common. The Olympick games at Pisa, and the festival of the Panathenaea, ought to be considered as establishments for instruction. The Portico, the Academy, the Lyceum, are only the distinguishing appellations of the most celebrated schools of Greece, where Plato, Zeno, Aristotle, Aristippus, were the schoolmasters. The latter was the Voltaire of Greece; many females of celebrity attended his school. To Pisistratus we owe the foundation of publick libraries; for it was he who first opened his own to the publick. The library of Apellicon preserved the books of Aristotle.

In the time of Alexander, the first botanical gardens, and the first cabinet of natural history, appeared in Greece. One of the Ptolemies, his successor at Alexandria, caused the reappearance of Egypt on the literary stage; he founded there a museum, and the library of the Bruchion, which contained at first one hundred thousand volumes, and was increased to the number of seven hundred thousand, of which three hundred thousand were deposited in Rachotis, a suburb of Alexandria.

Sicily was but a part of Greece, and had her own publick schools, whose professors received salaries from the government, at the time when Charondas was the legislator of Catania. Ctesias, of Leontium, now Leontini, taught rhetorick to his countrymen. There were schools at Messina and at Himera, now Termini, which produced the famous Epicharmus, inventor of the modern comedy.

Musick was publickly taught in Sicily, and throughout the kingdom of Naples. The modern Encyclopedists have their prototypes among the Greeks of Sicily; for such were Docearchus, of Messina, and Gorgias, of Leontium, of whom the former wrote a treatise on geography, one part of which yet remains to us, and the latter, Orations, which have come down to us in ruins.

The Prytanea were places of instruction supported by government, of which there were twelve or fifteen in Greece and the colonies. The word museum is found among the Greek writers, as signifying a collection of things relative to the fine arts, and a place where literature was taught;* there was an establishment of this kind at Athens, at Stagira, the birthplace of Aristotle, and at TroeStrabo mentions one at Alexandria also, where mathema

zene.

* Athen. et Cas. in Athen:

ticians, philosophers, rhetoricians, and poets were maintained and honoured. He applies to it, indiscriminately, the terms museum and college.

From Greece we immediately pass over to Rome, which had its schools at the beginning of the fourth century, after the building of the city. Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, relates that Appius Claudius, the Decemvir, saw the daughter of Lucius Virginius, for the first time, while she was reading in a school. If any credit is to be given to this passage, we must conclude that Rome, so decried for barbarity and ignorance, contained schools, not only for their men, but for their women also. They confined them, however, to the rudiments of instruction; for the spirit of their government, and severity of their manners, did not admit of a more extensive system of education.

Rhetoricians and sophists dared to open new schools, in which they pretended to establish new methods of instructions; but the Romans did not suffer it, looking upon it as a dangerous innovation. A state, yet in its infancy, surrounded with powerful enemies, was obliged to be circumspect and distrustful; and the decree of Domitius Enobarbus and L. Licinius Crassus, the censors, shut up the schools.

The Romans, at the same time they adopted the Greek philosophy, introduced all the different systems of the Greek philosophers; but their sectaries had no rendezvous for the purpose of publick disputation. Some pretend that Stigidius Figulus held a school of Pythagorean philosophy, and that Antiochus, of Ascalon, taught in publick the dogmas of Plato. We have no certain information as to the existence of these schools; all we know is that it was the fashion among the Romans to adhere nominally to certain sects; that M. Brutus called himself a Platonist; that Cato, of Utica, was a Zenonist; Crassus, a Peripatetick; and Pomponius Atticus, an Epicurian.

Under the government of Augustus schools multiplied, and grammar was more generally professed than it had ever been in Greece, where all the schools confined themselves to the teaching of philosophy in general, or of the art of declamation and gymnastick exercis es. Cremona, Padua, Milan, Mantua, had their seminaries of learning. The temples, the basilica, the theatres, resounded with the lessons of rhetoricians, grammarians and philosophers of the day; they recited compositions, declaimed, and held disputations. The scholars were very eager to dispute, in order to receive the acclamations and plaudits of the people; and this acquired them the name of Scoliastae.

Under the reign of Vespasian, professors were paid out of the publick treasury; Quintilian was of the number. Trajan founded academies where poets and orators read their own productions. Adrian built the Athenaeum; and added to the chairs of orators and grammarians, those of philosophers, who mingled the theories of Platonism with some practical notion of physick. Junius Moderatus was a professor of medicine, or of natural philosophy. The