On the following day, his body was found in the same place without marks of external violence, and resembling a person asleep rather than one who had suffered death. This event took place on the 24th August, in the seventy-ninth year of the Christian era, and a few months after the demise of Vespasian. As in the case of almost every writer of eminence, so in that of Pliny, we find panegyrists, whose admiration leads them to lavish the most extravagant praise, and calumniators, who seem resolved to leave nothing to be admired. It is astonishing, says one, that in every department he is equally great. Elevation of ideas, and grandeur of style, give additional exaltation to his profound erudition. Not only was he acquainted with all that was known in his time, but he possessed that facility of forming comprehensive conceptions, which multiplies science; he possessed that delicacy of reflection on which depend elegance and taste; and he communicates to his readers a certain freedom of mind, a boldness of thought, which is the germ of philosophy. His work, which is as varied as Nature, paints her always in a favourable light. It may be said to be a compilation of all that had previously been written, a copy of every thing useful and excellent that existed; but in this copy the execution is so bold,--in this compilation the materials are disposed in a manner so new, that it is preferable to the greater part of the originals which treat of the same topics.[E] The judgment of a recent author, founded also on an extensive view of his character, is perhaps more worthy of our confidence. It were impossible, it is remarked, that in handling, even in the briefest manner, so prodigious a number of subjects, he should not have made known a multitude of facts, which are not only in themselves remarkable, but so much the more valuable to us, that he is the only author who has made mention of them. Unfortunately, the manner in which he has collected and expounded them detracts much from their value; while, from the mixture of truth and falsehood, but more especially from the difficulty, and even in some cases the impossibility, of making out the objects of which he speaks, the reader is often left in the dark. Pliny was not such an observer as Aristotle; much less was he a man of genius like that great philosopher, capable of apprehending the laws and relations according to which Nature has disposed her productions. He was in general merely a compiler, and even in many instances a compiler who, not having himself any knowledge of the objects concerning which he collected the testimony of others, was unable to appreciate the truth of these testimonies, or even in all cases to comprehend their precise meaning. He is in short an author destitute of critical acumen, who, after occupying a great deal of time in making his extracts and arranging them in certain chapters, has added to them reflections which