If the first ‘Ptolemy’ of Michael Villanovanus had been seen as an improvement on its predecessors, his second was a marked advance upon it, and is interesting to us on many accounts. Though much lauded and commercially successful, the first edition, in a literary point of view, was still far from what it was capable of being made. The ornamentation of the volume, though profuse, was not highly artistic, and the wood-cuts had already done duty in various other publishing ventures. There was ample room for improvement both in the direction of greater accuracy of text and of better taste. In the re-issue, consequently, we find various alterations, and two or three omissions that are highly significant. It is printed on better paper, too, and new maps are added; the coarse wood-cuts are left out, and the text in various parts is amended. Altogether the volume is a very handsome one, and was obviously produced with every care to secure accuracy and elegance. In his Dedication to the Archbishop, we have an assurance that life among the polished circles of Vienne had already had a mollifying influence on the hot-headed Michel Villeneuve of Parisian days. The polite terms in which, beside the Archbishop, all and sundry of mark and name in the city are spoken of, are particularly notable. We know how little there was of compliment in the words with which he took leave of his Swiss opponents, and imagine the sting there must be in the paper with which he bade the Parisian Faculty farewell. But now, beneath the wing of the great church dignitary, and referring to the time when as professor of geography and astrology he had had him among the number of his auditors, Villanovanus tells us that he is especially encouraged in his purpose to produce a more correct edition of the great geographer’s work, by the permission he has received to dedicate it to his patron, as well as by the assistance he has had from him in the amendment of numerous faulty passages.