The first day after our arrival we were besieged with beggars of eve ry sort. They come off in boats and surround the vessel. One moment a capuchin would extend his cowl, and in a submissive attitude ask our charity; hardly rid of him, before a band of musick would be

obtained; the serenade finished, a woman with three or four misera, ble children would be screaming for something. These scenes are so new to an American, that we always gave them; and in consequence were so surrounded with suppli cants, that we were obliged at last to refuse our charity altogether.

MY own opinion always has been, that the present state of illumination and refinement will be succeeded by second darkness and Cimmerian night, equally gloomy with the cloud raised by the crush of the Roman empire. The reply of those to whom the idea was suggested uniformly has been, impossible; the art of printing renders such fears groundless. I answer : the art of printing itself may become exclusively the engine of wickedness, of vice, of folly, of irreligion. If the fashion or madness of the times should produce a relish for corrupted food, we may be filled with writings to satiety, yet swallow nothing but poison; what infinite mischief has the press produced in our own days! In France, the vehicle of every crime, it has been the easy propagator of blasphemy, of massacre, of anarchy. Whether it shall finally be a blessing or a curse, must depend on the taste of mankind; and if that taste be vitiated, and feeds upon venom, the more it consumes the sooner will we perish. The press without morals will not preserve civilization; and immorality will make it the vehicle of barbarism.,

What do the common people now read?...newspapers; and what

u་

do newspapers contain?...false news, false principles, false morals, endeavoured to be impressed on the publick by contending parties, without the least regard to truth, to virtue, or publick utility; and who are the compilers of these vehicles of instruction (the only lessons learnt by the vulgar)? often the lowest, and vilest, and most ignorant of mankind. Socrates, Plato, and Ari stotle taught the Athenian people. The people of London are taught by the compilers of newspapers, the engines of the mob or of the court.

That the common people ought not to be taught to read, as is said by some, is justly thought a monstrous position, yet it might be rendered true, if all they read tend to mislead and to darken them.

Does the press improve their civilization? that press which pours forth every day, for the improvement of our young men, the scenes of a brothel, illustrated with drawings; and for its maidens, the delusions of a novel, or the evidence of a trial for adultery? Query, whether the publications of morality and religion, numerous as they are, countervail the advantage which Satan derives from the art of printing?

Suppose a nation should take it in their heads to condemn all old systems and all old books, because they contain old systems; sup pose they should include the Bible in the number; suppose they should prevent the reprinting of all present learning, and insist that nothing should be published except their own new-fangled doctrines, and that these doctrines tended to unhinge all civilized society. Reader, are my suspicions wild? know then, if you know it not already, they were realized in our own day; they were realized in France within these five years*; they were realized by the tyrant Robespierre; by Robespierre worse than Omar, for Omar acted not from enmity to learning, but from friendship to Mahometanism.

It has employed the whole vigour of the French nation to return

These sketches were published in 1798.

from their phrenzy to common sense; but nations will not always recover from their phrensies, and in progress of time my fears may be realized. France in its wild deliriums has astonished the world; they may be outdone by some more outrageous fever, which may finally end in the extinction of light and life. Human nature, insolent and presuming in its own strength, spurning the aids of divine revelation, and even of ancient learning, may relapse after convulsions into lethargy, and till the impossibility of such events be proved by some better argument than the invention of printing, I shall ever, from data afforded by the history of modern times, believe their probability. The age of pretended self suffi cient reason will become the age of absurdity; irreligion will subvert all government, and anarchy lead to barbarism.

GENTLEMEN,

THE immense archives of ancient learning in the famous library of Alexandria, since the publication of the Latin version of the Dynasties of Abulpharagius, have generally been supposed to have been destroyed by the inconsiderate, infuriate zeal of the Mahom etan Arabs, on their invasion of Alexandria under the command of Omar, and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius of antiquity." If Hamlet, in the ravings of his imagination, did so force his thoughts to his own conceit, as to reason himself into a belief, that he could trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he found

it stopping a bunghole; the world, with insufferable credulity, and without troubling themselves to reason at all, have traced the parchments of the Alexandrian library till they found them distributed by the command of an ignorant fanatick to the four thousand baths of the city, and, such being their incredible number, that six months were scarcely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Many writers in different parts of Europe have lately denied the authenticity of the fact, which is indeed marvellous. In 1794 M. K. Reinhard published a dissertation in the German language, in which he attempts to prove, that the li brary was demolished long before

the year 640, the time when Alexandria was taken by the Saracens. In the Spectateur du Nord, for September 1798, I find an article on this celebrated library, written by some one who signs himself V*****, whom I presume to be Volney, the celebrated traveller into Egypt, and who confessedly avails himself of the materials of M. K. Reinhard. Thinking that it might afford some amusement to the readers of the Anthology, I have made a translation from the French and now send it to you for publication.

Whatever was the ulteriour destination of the Alexandrian library, we may ask, Have the learned world much reason to regret its destruction? Gibbon, in his history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, [Amer. edit. vol. 6, page 368] seems to answer the question in the negative. "I sincerely regret, says he, the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion; the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyrick, iambick, and dramatick poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember, that the mischançes of time and accident have spared the classick works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory the teachers of an cient knowledge, who are still ex tant, had perused and compared

the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages."

Without entirely rejecting the opinion of Gibbon on this subject, we cannot however but believe, that our literary treasures would have been greater, if we still could have recourse to the library of the Serapion. By whatever means it was destroyed, by the worms or by the flames, by neglect or fanaticism, it is very certain that it would have furnished us with the works of Aristotle complete and correct; of Menander; all that is wanting of Eschylus; of Euripides; the poems of Empidocles, and of Stersichorus; a variety of philosophical. writings of Theo phrastus, Epicurus, and many others; and a multitude of histor ick facts, of which we are now forever deprived. These losses ought certainly to occasion some regret to the friends of the sciences and the muses.

But I am willing to acknowledge, in deploring the loss of the great library in the temple of Serapis, we may view with indifference the parchments burnt by Amrou, if indeed he burnt any, It will be clearly demonstrated in the following dissertation, that, in his time, the collection of the Ptolemies could no longer have existed; and all the historians affirm, that, for the two or three centuries preceding the arrival of the Musselmen, there had appear¬ ed an enormous quantity of polem ical writing, produced by the Gnostics, the Arians, the Monosophists, the Monotelites, &c. &c, differents sects, which much agi. tated the empire, and particularly

Alexandria. It is very probable, that the houses of the patriarchs and the churches were very full of these writings; and if they afforded fuel to heat the baths, we are of

opinion, with Mr. Gibbon, that they were ultimately devoted for the benefit of mankind.

SAMPSICERAMUS.

ALEXANDRIA, almost at the commencement of its foundation by the conqueror of India, became affluent and powerful, and its progress was still more rapid under his royal successors. It was divided into many quarters, which were like so many towns. One of these quarters, the Bruchion, situated on the banks of the sea near the grand harbour, included all the edifices attached to the basilicum, or palace of the king, the great college, and many others. The first of the Ptolemies, Lagus, did not confine his efforts to render Alexandria one of the most beautiful and commercial cities, he wished that it might also become the focus of the sciences and philosophy. In conjunction with Demetrius of Phalaris, an Athenian emigrant, this prince established there a society of wise men, similar to the modern French academies and institutes. He built for their accommodation that celebrated museum, which was an additional ornament to the Bruchion; there was placed that ponderous library, which Titus Livy styles, elegantiæ regum curaque egregium opus.

Philadelphus, successor of Lagus, seeing that the library of the Bruchion contained four hundred thousand volumes, either that the place could not contain a greater number, or that he was ambitious for a similar monument to eternise his own name, founded a second li

brary in the temple of Serapis, called the Serapion, situated at some distance from the Bruchion, in another quarter of the city. These two libraries were for a long time called the mother and daughter. Cæsar, during his war in Egypt, burnt the royal fleet in the great bay of Alexandria, and the fire communicated to the Bruchion; the mother library was consumed, and if any of the manuscripts were rescued from the flames, they were probably deposited in that of the Serapion, which in future can be the only subject in dispute. Evergetes, and the other Ptolemies, successively augmented the library. Cleopatra there deposited two hundred thousand manuscripts of the Pergamean library, with which she was presented by Mark Antony.

Let us now follow the traces of the existence of the library. Aulus Gellius and Ammianus Marcellinus seem to intimate, that the contents of the Alexandrian library were burnt by the fire in the time of Cæsar. The first declares in his Noctes Attica, "that the number of the books, collected in Egypt by the Ptolemies, was immense, amounting even to seven hundred thousand volumes, but they were all burnt in the war which Julius Cæsar waged with the inhabitants of Alexandria, not with premeditated design, but by the soldiers who were perhaps auxiliaries." [Lib. 6. Cap. 17.]

Ammianus Marcellinus, in the 22d book and 16th chapter of his history, says, "The Serapion contained an inestiinable library of seven hundred thousand volumes, collected by the industry of the Ptolemies and burnt during the war of Alexandria, when that city was destroyed by the dictator Cesar." But both of the historians have erred on the same point. Ammianus, in the course of his recital, evidently confounds the Serapion and the Bruchion. It is clearly proved, that Cesar destroyed some buildings of the latter only, and not the whole city.

Suetonius, in his life of Domitian, relates that this emperour sent copyists to Alexandria to transcribe a great number of books, which he wanted for his library. The library must then have existed a long time after Cæsar. Besides, we know that the Serapion was not destroyed until the year of our Lord 391 by the orders of Theodosius.

Without doubt the library suf fered considerably on the last occasion. But after this it still existed, at least in part; which we cannot doubt on the testimony of Orosius, who, twenty-four years afterwards, travelled into Alex

andria, and who declares, that he saw there, in many temples, cases filled with bobks, the reliques of the ancient libraries. It is worthy of remark, that this author, as well as Seneca in his treatise De Tranquil itate Animi, relate, that the num ber of volumes burnt by Cæsar amounted to four hundred thousand; and as it appears that the total number of the books was but seven hundred thousand, there remains, with what they were able to save from the library in the Bruchion, at most but three or four hundred thousand to compose the one in the Serapion.

The veracious Orosius, in 415, is the last witness we have, who testifies to the existence of the library at Alexandria. The numerous christian writers of the fifth and sixth centuries, who have transmitted to us many useless facts, do not say one word on this important subject. We have then no more certain documents, respecting the fate of the library, from 415 until 636, or, according to some, not until 648, when Alexandria was taken by the Arabs....a period of ignorance, of barbarism, of wars, of convulsions, and of fruitless disputes between a hundred different sects.

About the year of our Saviour 640 the troops of the caliph Omar, under the command of Amrou, took Alexandria. For more than ten centuries no person in Europe Interested himself to know what became of this celebrated library. At last, about the year 1660, a learned Oxonian, Edward Pococke, who had collected in two journies to the East many Arabian manuscripts, made known for the first

time to the learned world, in a latin translation, the oriental histo ry of the physician Abulpharagius, from whom we make the following extract..." At that time lived among the Musselmen John of Alexandria, who was called the grammarian, and who espoused the cause of the jacobite christians. He lived even at the time when Amrou-Ebno❜l-As took Alexandria. He attached himself to the conqueror; and