We quote these examples as instances of the peculiar defects with which most of the medieval relations of this kind are tainted, and which are unusually numerous in Borchardus. It was perhaps the period at which the trade in holy places was most flourishing, and when therefore they had been multiplied to the ntmost. On this account, and on account of his minute descriptions, the account of the Holy Land by Borchardus was extremely popular, and there are few subsequent writers on the same subject who do not betray the use they had made of it. The topographical description of the country runs through the first part or section of the work of Borchardus; in a second he treats of its natural characteristics, and of the characters of the various races or religious sects which inhabited it, and his book closes with a description of Egypt. The later English pilgrim to whom we have alluded was Sir Richard Guilford, a distinguished knight, who flourished during the reign of Richard III, and who served under the banner of the Duke of Richmond, and probably fought for him at Bosworth Field. On the 8th of April, 1506, Sir Richard, then an old man, set sail from Rye in Sussex, in company with the Prior of Giseburn in Yorkshire, and they proceeded together to Syria, where however they did not arrive till the August of the following year. The narrative of the voyage was compiled by Sir Richard's chaplain, who, instead of writing in Latin, like Borchardus, made use of his mother tongue, the quaint English of the time. This writer describes rather minutely what the pilgrims saw and did on their way through France, Italy, and the Grecian Archipelago. The Turks were now masters of Constantinople, and at war with the Venetians, and the navigation of the eastern part of the Mediterranean was far from safe for Christians. Our pilgrims landed at Jaffa on the 18th of August, 1506, and we have here the description of the difficulties here thrown in their way. 66 Memorandum, that upon Tewysday, at nyght, aboute vj of the cloke, that was the xviij daye of August, we come to Jaffe, and fell to an ancre in the rode there; and incontynently we sent to Jherusalem for ye father warden of mounte Syon to come and se us conducted to Jherusalem, as ye custome is, &c. Howbeit, notwithstondyng all our haste, we lay there in our galye vij dayes or yt he come to us; the cause was for he coude no sooner have the lordes of Jherusalem and Rama at layser to come to us, without whose presence and conducte there can no pylgryme passe; whiche lordes be all Mamolukes and under the soldan. And after theyr commynge, whan the patron and warden aforesayde hadde comenyd with theym by the space of ij. dayes and intreated of our tribute, and concluded what sume our patron shulde paye for us, than we were suffred to come to londe. "The daye of our londynge there was Thursday, that was the xxvij. daye of Auguste; and as we come out of the bote we were receyved by ye Mamolukes and Sarrasyns, and put into an olde cave, by name and tale, there scryvan ever wrytyng our names man by man as we entred in the presens of the sayd lordes; and there we lay in the same grotte or cave Fridaye all day, upon the bare, stynkynge, stable grounde, as well nyght as daye, right evyll intreated by the Maures, &c." Under the rule of the Turks the various accommodations which the Arabs had allowed to be made for Christian pilgrims seem to have been destroyed or despoiled, and the discomforts of the way were now very great. Sir Richard Guilford and his companions found an example of this in the hospital which had been established by Philip of Burgundy at Rama. "Saterdaye, the xxix daye of Auguste, we departed from Jaffe erly in the morn aynge, and come to Rama upon asses by noon, and there we were receyved into duke Phylyps hospytall, and it is called so bycause duke Phylip of Borgone buylded it of his greate charyte to receyve pylgrymes therin. We founde no thinge therin, but bare walles and bare floures, excepte onely a welle of good fresshe water, whiche was moche to our comforth; nevertheles there come into us Jacobyns and other feynyd cristen men of sondry sectis, that brought unto us mattes for oure money, to lye upon, and also brede, soddyn egges, and somtyme other vytaylles; and there we taryed all that nyght and Sondaye all daye." Between Rama and Jerusalem both the knight and the prior of Giseburn fell sick, and they were conveyed to the Holy City with considerable difficulty. They entered Jerusalem on the last day of August, and they proceeded without delay to visit the holy places. The description which Sir Richard's chaplain gives of Jerusalem is scarcely less minute than that of Borchardus, and it is if anything more disfigured by ridiculous legends, although mixed with notices of the existence of buildings, especially churches, and some other objects which have since disappeared. On the Mount of Olivet, for instance, was shown the stone, "wherupon ye angell stode comfortynge hym the same tyme. In the same churche is ye stone upon ye whiche our Savyour standynge ascendyd into hevyn, in the which stone ye prynte of his holy fete yet appere, and specyally of the ryght fote, &c.; And here is clene remyssyon. Somwhat bynethe that village we come to an olde, forleten, ruynous churche, somtyme of seynt Marke, where the appostles, after the ascencion of our Lorde, made the Credo of our fayth, &c. Item, som what more descendynge we come to a certayne stone upon ye which our blessyd Lady was wont to rest her werynes whan she most devoutly visyted these holy places after ye ascension of or Lord, &c." At Bethlehem the pilgrims saw the evidence of a miracle which had also been seen and described by Borchardus, and which the chaplain of the English knight describes as follows:- "And thus the same Fryday at nyght we came to this Bethlem, and alyght at ye churche of our Lady aforesayd, which is a mervaylous fayre church and a right sumptuous werke; y length of y churche is ccxxviij fote, and ye brede is lxxxvij fote; there be iiij rowes or ranges of pylers thrughout ye church, of ye fynest marble y' may be, not onely mervaylous for ye nombre but for ye outragyous gretnes, length, and fayrenes therof. I never saw nor herde of a fayrer lytell churche in all my lyfe. The sawden was in purpose to a remevyd those pyllers, wt some other stones of aulters yt be right fayre and precious there, and to have caried them to Cayre to have buylded his paloys with ye same, and for y' entent he come to Bethlem in his owne persone to se them taken downe, and as he behelde ye masons bygynnynge to breke, sodenly there come out of the churche wall within, forth nyghe there ye sowden was, an houge, grete serpent, yt ranne endlonge upon the right up syde of ye churche wal, and scorched ye sayd wall as it had be synged wt fyre al ye way yt he went, which scorchyng is sene unto this day. And there as the sayd serpent come out of the ye wall there brake no parte of ye sayde wall, nor none hole nor brusor apperyd nor payntynge defaced. And with this syght the sowdan avoyded with grete fere, and all tho yt were with hym; and never syns he nor none other attempted to reve any thynge there, &c." We are especially struck, in reading this relation, with the frequent occurrence of the ruins of churches and other buildings which the earlier travellers found in a perfect and flourishing state. Thus, to take the first page that presents itself, that in which our writer is describing the mountains of Judah : "And in the hyghest parte alofte over y' house there was somtyme a churche y nowe is fallen, where is the place where as Zacharye, fulfylled with the Holy Gooste, prophecyed, sayeng, Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, &c. and where also he asked penne and ynke, and wrote of his sone, Johannes est nomen eius, &c. "Not fer thens is an other large hous wher was somtyme a churche, and there is ye place where Seynt Johan was borne, but now the sayd churche is so fer desolate that it is made an hous for bestis, &c." During this time the knight and the prior had been gradually sinking under bodily disease, and they had now reached the close not only of their travels, but of their earthly pilgrimage. ઃઃ Sonday, the vj day of Septembre, we went all to Mounte Syon to masse ; and the same day we dyned with ye warden and freres there, where we had a right honest dyner, and or than we rose from the borde the warden rose from ye borde, and toke a basyn full of folden papres with relyques in eche of them, and so he went endelonge the cloyster there we sat at ye table and dalt to every pylgryme as he passed a papre wt relyques of ye holy places aboute Jherusalem, which we toke as devoutly as we coude, and thankes accordyng. "The Saterdaye byfore, mayster pryor of Gysborogh disceased, aboute ij or iij. of the cloke at after noone, and the same nyght late he was had to Mounte Syon and there buryed. "And this same Sonday at nyght, aboute j or ij of the cloke at after mydnyght, my M. syr Ric. Guylford, whom God assoyle, disceased, and was had ye same mornynge to Mounte Syon afore daye. "And the same Monday, our Ladyes even, ye Nativite, all the pylgrymes come to Mounte Syon, to the buryenge of my sayde master Guylford, where was done by the freres as moche solempne servyce as might be done for hym, &c.; and this was the vij daye of Septembre, &c." Their companions recommenced their wanderings the same afternoon, and having made the circuit of Judea and visited Damascus, they returned to Jaffa, from whence they sailed on their return the 18th of August, 1506. They encountered so many hindrances from storms and other causes on their voyage homewards, that it was not till the 30th of January following that they at length reached Venice. They landed at Dover on the 9th of March, 1507, and Sir Richard Guilford's chaplain immediately employed himself in committing to writing the narrative of their pilgrimage. This narrative was printed soon afterwards in a little black-letter volume at the press of Richard Pynson; a reprint of which has been recently published by the Camden Society, and has been carefully edited; and we may add that a more popular attempt to call attention to this class of literary monuments has been made by Mr. Wright in the collection of Early Travels in Palestine, published by Henry G. Bohn. ART. VII.-The Athenian Letters. Athenian Letters; or the Epistolary Correspondence of an Agent of the King of Persia, residing at Athens during the Peloponnesian War. A new edition. London, 1798. THERE is certainly no department of knowledge, unless physical science be an exception, in which greater advances have been made in recent times than in that branch which Dr. Arnold so profoundly designates as "what is miscalled Ancient History, the truly Modern History of Greece and Rome." And the change is the more remarkable, because, speaking generally, the same evidence which lies before us lay before our predecessors one or two centuries ago. The discovery of an undeciphered inscription, the more complete survey of a harbour, or the more accurate measurement of a mountain, may indeed ever and anon explain some passage of an ancient author which had hitherto remained unintelligible; it may throw light on the tactics of Phormio or Brasidas, or even prove the key to some portion of the policy of Pericles or of Philip. Of course, our knowledge is always open to be indefinitely improved in this way by discoveries in detail; hardly a road can be cut or an estate measured out within the countries in question without giving at the least the opportunity of fresh discoveries, which year by year are more likely to be carried out in an enterprizing and enlightened spirit. But the great source of knowledge, after all, is to be found in the works of the ancient historians and other writers; and those, with all the treasures of political and moral wisdom which they contain, lay as much at the command of the inquirer of the eighteenth as of the nineteenth century. The volume lay physically open before the eyes of Dr. Lempriere as much as before those of Mr. Grote; it is purely a difference of intellectual habit which made it practically a sealed book to the one, and as clear as noon-day to the other. Each could read and construe the words; but one is a mere literal transcriber of words read and construed but not understood; the other becomes a guide and expounder to the real meaning and practical bearing of the document. And the change is almost entirely an intellectual one. It is not like the discoveries of physical science, where accident or experiment reveals some previously unknown law, which, as soon as discovered, at once takes its place as a recognized and undoubted fact. Very often indeed it assumes a visible and practical form which brings it within the reach of every man's sense, and makes its employment a portion of his daily life. But a new method of studying or viewing history cannot be made the subject of irrefragable demonstration of this kind; it must rest on purely intellectual, or rather moral, evidence, which it requires a certain habit of mind to appreciate. Consequently, while truths of the one class are universally accepted, those of the other are always rejected by a certain proportion of unbelievers. No man who walks London streets at midnight with as little chance of stumbling as at mid-day, feels any doubts as to the properties of gas; no man who has been conveyed from London to York without any visible impetus, refuses to accept the true doctrine as to the locomotive power of steam. Few probably, if any, believe that the sun goes round the earth, or if they do, their astronomical theory probably embraces also the hardly more thoroughly exploded dogma that the moon is made of green cheese. But many people still hold that Cecrops was king of Athens, some perhaps even adhere to the creed |