best reasons, the Cantabric, also the Hungaric, to which many think it not unlike, ought to be placed. But whilst the question remains uncertain, and the constitution of the language is not thoroughly understood, we have described it as among the Aryan languages rather than as being of some other family. Moreover, according to custom we have named one family as the Letto-Slavic, although in reality it does not absolutely answer to that name. For although there are in it many things common to the Slavonic and Lithuanian languages, yet there are some belonging to a different language and which cannot be referred to the same family. Add to which, that the name Letto-Slavic seems to overlook what is the chief thing, since if compared with the Lithuanian, the Lettic dialect is as if the Russian were compared with the older Slavonic or Paleo-Slavonic, or the Sanscrit Pracrit. Wherefore the two families should be more accurately distinguished. And the same may be said of some of the other greater families, as the Indo-Iranic and the Italo-Hellenic, which we have given as an example of others; but from their nature they might easily be divided into two lesser languages. Lastly, let us say, that if in our hasty and hurried work faults have happened which we cannot excuse, we will yet ask the reader's forbearance. To omit others, whoever examines the Celtic dialects will perceive that they should be described as a family and that the Japanese should be placed not among the monosyllabic but the Turanic languages. But the more accurate index which we intend to give will remove these errata.

And having now said enough, and more than enough, we here make an end. If we have raised expectations to which our work does not answer, we trust we shall find just and benignant judges. But we shall especially think we have done well if, as we said at the outset, this book and its specimen of the riches of Roman typography should in any measure foreshadow that most holy council whereat the bishops of every nation are assembled, and whose glory and eminence we have striven to increase with all our might and with a grateful mind.

THIS is a Map of the World, from that prepared by Fra Mauro, an ecclesiastic at Venice, between the years 1457 and 1460. The original, which is shewn there as one of its curiosities, was one of the results of the intelligence and commercial enterprise which in that age distinguished the Queen of the Adriatic. It is constructed on principles the very reverse of our maps; for instead of the north being at the top the south occupies that place, while the north is at the bottom, the east on the left side, and the west on the right. In each corner there are rubrics or explanations, with headings, the headings of the right hand corner at the top being:

66

How by God's ordering the earth rose above the water."

That of the bottom corner of the same side is :

"How greatly one element exceeds the other in quantity."

That at the left hand corner at the top is:

"Of the number of the heavens according to Holy Scripture."

That of the bottom corner of the same side is :

"On the site of the terrestrial paradise." (To which there is subjoined a picture of our first parents in the garden of Eden.)

The map is everywhere crowded with names and inscriptions, and representations of great buildings, some of which seem large enough to occupy a province. There are neither meridian lines nor parallels of latitude upon the map, which has fifty names of countries and

places, and eighteen of rivers and lakes, marked upon it, some of them spelt very strangely. Judea is placed very nearly in the centre of the world, Europe and England would be in their right position if the map were turned exactly round. When this map was made there was a general belief, which it would have been heresy to doubt, that the sun was not stationary, but that, like the other heavenly bodies he had an orbit in which he revolved. Galileo, who in maintaining a contrary opinion followed Copernicus, was thrown into prison for it two centuries later, and was there honoured with a visit from Milton. On this map there is drawn a sphere called the empire of the heavens, which shows the heavenly bodies in their orbits, where there is, first, the earth, then the moon, and afterwards these in their order, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and what is called the ninth (or new) sphere. Pythagoras had very early taught that the sun and moon, the planets and fixed stars, moved each in a transparent solid sphere, in the following order, next to the Earth the Moon, then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and last of all the sphere of the fixed stars, and that they moved with a harmony of sound inconceivably beautiful, their eight spheres forming by their different distances the seven notes of music, Mercury and Venus together making only one note, an idea which our great bard has thus beautifully improved :—

"Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

(Merchant of Venice, Act v. s. I.)

This map of Fra (or brother) Mauro must, from the first, have been held in high estimation at its birth place, as the subjoined inscription shows, which tells us that, after hanging for 195 years in the church and then in a hall called Mappamondo, it was removed by the Rev. P. D. Francis Oberard into the library of his monastery in 1655:

"Hæc tabula geographica cum per centum et nonaginta quinque annorum curriculum partim in ecclesiâ partim vero in auiâ quæ suo nomini dicata erat et dicebatur mappamondo fuissêt appensa tandem jussu Rev. P. D. Francisci Oberardi dicti erwic, arb, hujus monast. in

hac bibliothecâ seipso instauratâ dicatâ et exaratâ translata et collocata fuit Anno 1655, Deo. Dre."

A highly finished copy of it is preserved in the British Museum, and a reduced copy which is much easier to read than the original, is engraved in Murray's "Encyclopædia of Geography" (vol. i. 56). If this map was the best of its time it is worth seeing, that we may learn how far the moderns have surpassed the ancients in geography.

APPENDIX C.

ANCIENT MAPS.-Continued.

ANAXIMANDER, of the school of Miletus, who is referred to by Hipparchus, justly recognizing the value of geography to a commercial people, is supposed to have formed the first map of the world about 560 B.C. ("Encyclopædia Britannica," and Murray's "Encyclopædia of Geography," 23.) But even the learned Herodotus derided the idea of the earth being round.

Ptolemy, a great astronomer and geographer, who lived before A.D. 160, improved upon the works of Mela, another ancient geographer. He maintained that the earth moved round the sun, and was the first to prepare a map of the world with meridians and parallels of latitude. This map, as was to be expected, was very far from perfect, and he commits a singular error with regard to Great Britain, making the island to resemble somewhat in shape a falling letter, the effect of which was to make Scotland to incline too far towards the east.

There is an anglo-Saxon map of the world of the tenth century, which professes to exhibit most parts of the world as they were then known. (Knight's "Pictorial History of England;" "Translations of the Liverpool Historical Society," xii. 217.) In this map, which, after Ptolemy's is probably one of the oldest known, the east is at the top, the British Isles occupy the north-west corner, and Great Britain hangs like two door-posts and a lintel over the Isle of Man. London and two other places with names appear upon England, and one nameless place on Ireland. Wales appears to project from the most northerly point of Britain, and the sea beyond is studded with islands almost equal in area to Ireland. ("Liverpool Historical Society," xi. 219, where the map is engraved.)

There are occasional resemblances to curious objects in the outlines of some real maps of countries and places now. Italy, we know,