What then becomes of the statement of Vopiscus, the authority quoted by M. Vasi? I know nothing of him; but any man of observation must know that writers of a higher order of genius frequently betray great ignorance of positive things, and of nothing more than measurement. Sir Walter Scott, in his Life of Napoleon, says, “By the treaty of Presburgh, Austria is said to have lost _one million of square miles of territory, two millions and a half of subjects_, and a revenue to the amount of ten millions and a half of florins!” &c. &c.; and in speaking of another treaty, an error quite as gross appears. In the edition I read, letters were introduced, rendering the blunder still more serious.[4] Here the great poet, in a grave history, makes a fragment of the Austrian empire near four times as great as the whole empire, and almost a fifth as large as all Europe. Comparing population with surface, he makes the ratio about two souls and a half to the square mile, and that in a country where it probably exceeds three hundred.[5] Perhaps no men are less to be trusted in matters of this sort than purely literary men, and yet they usually produce the books. Let us suppose the art of printing unknown, and the only authority for the life of Napoleon, or rather for this one fact, to be, twenty centuries hence, a manuscript of a certain great author called Scotius, what marvels might not posterity believe of the extent of the Austrian empire!—such, probably, as M. Vasi would have us believe of the extent of Rome, on the authority of this Vopiscus. It is of no moment to the result, whether this error in the history of Napoleon was the consequence of ignorance or want of care in the author, or a blunder in the compositor. The circumstance, had it not been corrected, would have stood recorded; and in a manuscript, or an edition might, in the lapse of centuries, pass for an established fact, on the authority of a great name. Footnote 4: In the subsequent editions these errors of the author, or blunders of the press, which ever they may be, have been corrected. Footnote 5: Mr. Washington Irving, in his Life of Columbus, vol. i. p. 83, has the following:—“Between them is placed the island of Cipango, or Japan, which, according to Marco Polo, lay fifteen hundred miles distant from the Asiatic coast. _In his computation, Columbus advanced this island about a thousand leagues too much to the east, supposing it to be about in the situation of Florida, and at this island he hoped first to arrive._” The _centre_ of Florida and the centre of the island of Japan lie about 130° asunder. A degree of longitude in those latitudes will average somewhere about fifty miles, (this is approximative, not calculated,) which will give _two_ thousand leagues as the distance between them.