loss of the engineer-officers who were sent to make a survey of the coast. Gen. Abercrombie was thus obliged to feel his way, and to proceed step by step; instead of driving, as he otherwise would have done, the portion of the enemy opposed to him into Alexandria, and separating it at once from the reinforcements expected from Cairo. In the account given of our operations, M. MARTIN partakes too much of the partial spirit of Reynier, and bestows no praise on any of our exploits except the disembarkation.

At last, on the 8th of March, about half past six in the morning, an immense number of boats, crowded with troops, rowed towards the shore, between the opening of the lake Maadieh and the fort of Aboukir. The French were drawn up in order of battle on the heights, opposite to the part threatened. The enemy advanced in excellent order, in an immense line, the seamen rowing with all their strength; and they gained the shore with such extreme quickness, and such regularity of movement, that 6,000 men disembarked at the same instant, under the protection of the gunboats, which kept up a close and well supported fire. These 6,000 men were received by a rolling fire, a shower of grape-shot, and a charge of the bayonet; their right even was shaken: but, being assisted by a strong column from their left, and presenting besides a line of great extent, the French, from the smallness of their numbers, were unable to keep up a fire on all sides, and were obliged to give way. They had fought with the greatest resolution from seven o'clock till nine; but, fearful of exposing the garrison and town of Alexandria, General Friant fell back on that place, and took his stand in front of it.'

The second action (13th March) is described in few words, as attended with heavy loss to both parties, and as enabling the English to occupy a position in which their flanks were covered on one side by the sea, and on the other by the lake of Maadieh. The intervening space was a mile and a half in length; and General Reynier adverts to the smallness of its extent as an advantage, without making an allowance for the very limited number of the troops, the total of which did not exceed twelve or thirteen thousand men. He chuses to repre

sent the French, after the junction of the troops from Cairo, at less than ten thousand, but we have no doubt that the two armies were of nearly equal force. The enemy had an acknowleged superiority in cavalry and artillery; while the strength of the British lay in infantry.

Meñou having arrived on the 20th at Alexandria, it was agreed to attack the British on the next morning, before they could be apprized of the extent of the reinforcement received. An indirect application being made to Reynier and Lanusse for a plan of attack, Menou adopted the one that was sent to

him, and delivered it to the different Generals in the evening. The plan was to begin by a false attack on the British left; to make a great and sudden effort on their right, in the hope of forcing it on the centre; and to complete the success of the day by a charge of cavalry, which was, in the proud anticipation of our opponents," to drive the remains of our army into the lake." The march began an hour before day-light, in order that the French might reach the British line without being galled by the fire of the redoubts and gun-boats. Lanusse, an officer well known as heading the desperate attacks made in Italy, Egypt, and Syria, by order of Bonaparte, was appointed to command against the British right. He had, it seems, no fear but that our redoubts would be easily carried by a body. of grenadiers, supported by the heads of columns; and his soldiers marched accordingly in close order, with the intention of forming into line on drawing near the British position. Reynier, meantime, was to give the alarm on our left wing, and was confident of attracting our attention to that point, because we should consider it as the position likely to be occupied by French reinforcements arriving from the interior. He accordingly surprized a redoubt, made some prisoners, and, as he says, "greatly excited the attention of the British:" but his brethren on the other wing found the case otherwise; and in fact, from the first moment, General Abercrombie had directed his attention and his disposable force to the support of his right wing. Lanusse behaved with his usual intrepidity, until he received a mortal wound near the redoubt on our right. Several other officers of note were killed or wounded in this desperate conflict; and Reynier wishes to ascribe to this circumstance, and to the detached nature of the attack, that overthrow which recent events justify us in attributing to a prouder cause. The fact was, that the steadiness of our officers and men was on this, as on many subsequent occasions, the source of discomfiture to the enemy.

The fall of Lanusse induced Reynier to come immediately round in person to replace him, with the intention of proposing to Menou a second attack with the infantry. When about to take measures to that effect, he was surprized to see the cavalry on a full gallop to charge, and he had scarcely made a brigade approach to support them when he was a witness of their repulse. Indeed, circumstances had been so unfavourable to any prospect of success from a cavalry-attack, that General Roize, the commanding officer, delayed the onset until Menou's order was given for the third time. That officer then fell on the spot, and three-fourths of the men and horses were killed or disabled. It was now nearly nine o'clock, and Reynier

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Reynier urged Menou to take promptly a determination either to retreat or to advance: but two hours more were passed in indecision, till at last a retreat was ordered; and, the British not pursuing, the French withdrew about eleven o'clock, to the camp from which they had sallied forth in the morning Our loss was about thirteen hundred men; that of the French is not specified by Reynier, but was no doubt between three and four thousand, although M. MARTIN is not ashamed to reduce it to half the number.

The succeeding events are too fresh in the recollection of our readers to stand in need of any recapitulation in this place. In fact, we have been led to enlarge on the previous circumstances more by a desire to exhibit, in a connected view, the events which have hitherto been generally treated in detached portions, than by any novelty in the relation, or any value that we attach to the present performance. Though the author writes from personal observation, and is sufficiently explicit in point of dates, his work is both inaccurate and feeble, and by no means calculated to form a record for the future historian.

ART. II. Histoire Abrégée de la Littérature Romaine, &c.; i.e. An abridged History of Roman Literature, by F. SCHOLL, Conseiller de Cour to the King of Prussia, attached to his Legation at Paris. 8vo. 4 Vols. Paris. 1815. Imported by De Boffe. Price 21. 2s. sewed.

WIT

ITH considerable interest we announced, and with patient attention we epitomized, this author's Abridged History of Greek Literature in the lxxiiid volume of our Review, p. 449. He now undertakes a similar short view of the history of Roman Literature, which we shall critically analyze on the same plan as before; silently substituting for the exact contents of the chapter under notice such remarks as we conceive to be necessary for the correction of the work. On this occasion, however, we meet with less of questionable proposition and crude inquiry: the method adopted in the composition is more circumspect, comprehensive, and expatiatory; and the way is broader, more beaten, less rugged, and less difficult. Indeed, the French cultivate so much more the study of the Roman than of the Greek writers, that accounts ostentatiously copious were deemed necessary in an elementary work intended for them. Great use has been made in the present compilation of Schaaf's Encyclopedia of Classical Archæology, a German work of merit in this department of learning; and obligations are also expressed to M. Boisson

nade,

ade, lately a member of the Imperial Institute, for some correction of the French style; which the author, as a native of Prussia, may fairly be suspected not to possess in Parisian perfection.

Two introductory dissertations are prefixed, concerning each of which a few words may be expedient: the one treats of the primeval colonists of Italy, and the other on the origin of the Latin language.

Thus

Until the time of Aristotle, Italy is here said to have been divided into six provinces, called Ausonia or Opica, Tyrrhenia, Iapygia, Umbria, Liguria, and Henetia. Thucydides places Cuma and Aristotle places all Latium in Opica. Antiochus, a son of Xenophanes, who flourished about the year 520 of Rome, wrote a geographical work intitled Iraxias dixisμos, of which Strabo makes some mention; and on this authority probably Thucydides relies in contradistinguishing, (vii. 33.) from Iapygia, Italy properly so called, which originally comprehended only the southern part of the peninsula. The triumvirate of Octavius, Anthony, and Lepidus first extended the denomination of Italy to the Alps. About three hundred years after the Christian æra, when the Emperor Maximian tranferred his residence to Milan, the name of Italy was exclusively applied to the northern provinces; and in this sense the kings of Lombardy afterward called themselves Kings of Italy.

In early days, a nomade-population of Gaelic and Cimbric graziers entered Italy by land on the north; and a Greek population of pirates and fugitives settled in the sea-ports of the south. Lanzi, in his Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, is inclined to discover every where traces of the Greeks, and conceives the internal population to have chiefly descended from them but, as many words in the Latin language are not of Greek origin, and are found in the Gaelic and Cimbric dialects of Ireland and Wales, these words must have come from the inlanders, and not from the transmarine colonists. A remarkable word of this kind is caseus, or cheese; from the existence of which, in the Latin language, it may rationally be inferred that the art of making cheese was carried into Italy by the Cimbric or Pelasgic graziers, and first practised there by them. On the relative civilization of the Pelasgic graziers, and of the Hellene pirates, we made several animadversions in our lxxixth vol. p. 491-502., which are not less applicable to the early condition of Italy than to that of Greece. M. SCHOLL would divide the original colonists of Italy into five tribes, whom he calls Illyrians, Iberians, Celts, Pelasgi, and Etrurians: but we object to this division that it is not founded

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founded on the distinction of languages. All the tribes which entered Italy from Illyria, at the northern extremity of the Adriatic, are called Illyrian occasionally by the geographers: but of these tribes only the Gaelic and Cimbric have left traces in the Latin language, that is, the Celts and Pelasgi, and the Etrurians. We incline to dismiss the Illyrians from among the stem-tribes of Italy, as merely indicating the course of progress; and the Iberi, ranked by the present author among the Cantabrian or Basque tribes, who rather appear to be of African origin. From Strabo, (lib. iii. p. 166.) the name Iberi seems to be synonymous with Westlanders; and accordingly the westernmost settlers in Lombardy, the tribes inhabiting the coast about Genova, are described as Iberi. The Etrurians form the most important and influential portion of the tribes who entered Italy by land; and authorities are here addueed (p. 33.) for ascribing to them a government by an hereditary order, divided into priests and soldiers. This constitution so closely resembles the division of the Pelasgic, or Welsh, nations into the bardic orders of Druids and Braints, that the Etrurians may safely be referred to the Pelasgic stock.

Such are

Dissertation II., on the origin of the Latin language, contains some curious documents of its pristine state. the Oscan-inscription, published in 1774 at Rome from a marble monument at Nola, intitled Passerii Lingua Osca Specimen singulare; the song of the Arval-brethren, found engraved on a stone discovered in 1778, and preserved in the vestry of St. Peter's; the portion of the laws of Numa preserved by Festus; and the inscription on the rostral column erected in honour of Duillius Nepos. In this last may be remarked the habitual use of the old ablatives in od and ed, and the genitives in ai. The progress of culture approximated the Latin language more and more to the Greek. It is here stated that the first alphabet had only sixteen letters, and that it was introduced by the Pelasgi. R, G, X, H, K, F, Y, Z, are considered as the letters of posterior introduction.

The History of Roman Literature embraces a period of twelve centuries, from the foundation of the city to the fall of the Western empire. It is here divided into five periods. I. The five centuries terminating with the first Punic war. H. From the close of the first Punic war to the death of Sylla. III. The Augustan Age. IV. The Silver Age, terminating with the Antonines. V. The decline and fall of Latin literature. Its revival among the moderns, not as a a vernacular but as a learned language, forms no part of the author's plan.

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