Italy and Greece therefore are the only countries which were at all made the subjects of any learned inquiries. In the meantime books of travels, which combined ancient and modern geography, also furnished many materials to increase the knowledge of other countries. Much was gained by the voyages of the English to India: Egypt was thus brought to light; and Syria and some of the countries of Asia Minor were laid open, by Richard Pococke; and many a discovery was made accidentally during the active intercourse with those countries. The travels of Shaw are an excellent work for the ethnography of northern Africa, especially Numidia and the Roman province of Africa: he did for those countries what Cluver and Paulmier before him had done for others. During the eighteenth century, the great D’Anville, one of the most brilliant geniuses I know, without writing many books, contributed, by his maps, more than any other man to advance geographical knowledge at a gigantic rate. I cannot allow any opportunity to pass without avowing my admiration of that man’s greatness: by the light he has thrown upon ancient geography, he has acquired as much merit in historical philology as in ancient history. Major Rennell, who is still alive, has undeservedly been placed by the side of D’Anville; he has done much that is invaluable, he is diligent and indefatigable in collecting materials; but there is one point in which he differs from D’Anville, and in which he is far inferior to him. D’Anville possessed a peculiar power of divination and of estimating the value of his materials; he was not only extremely industrious in collecting them, but knew how to value each point most correctly, and how to use and combine his matter in the most sagacious manner, always clearly distinguishing between what he knew and what he did not know; while Major Rennell, on the other hand, has spoiled his best materials by his scrupulous attempts to reconcile what is incorrect with what is correct. D’Anville’s _Mémoire sur la Mer Rouge_, for example, is the most excellent chart of the Arabian Gulf. All the earlier ones were copied from the ancient Venetian ones; but all at once D’Anville furnished an accurate, detailed, and astronomically correct description of the coasts, islands, and countries, which he had compiled from the most different and wretched materials, furnished by Portuguese, Turkish, and other maps. He discerned with the most marvellous tact which statements were entitled to belief and which not. Any one knowing what geography was before the time of D’Anville, cannot sufficiently admire him. Two of his works, that on ancient and modern Egypt and that on Gaul, are particularly excellent; his little manual is of less value. But the whole series of maps in his Atlas of the ancient world will be unsurpassed, until another D’Anville arises who shall draw his maps according to the improved geographical knowledge we now possess. Southern Italy is not yet perfect in his map;