In few instances is the growth of wise and liberal ideas more apparent than in the comparative condition and treatment of the Jews at the period when our author travelled, and at present. At Mantua, however, even then, they were patronised and favoured by the reigning Duke; so as they were not obliged to dwell in any particular part of the city, (as in other parts of Italy,) nor to wear yellow or red caps, whereby they might be known, but only a little piece of yellow cloth on the left side of their cloaks, so as that they could hardly be distinguished from Christians, especially in their shops, where they wear no cloaks. This privilege, however, our author expressly ascribes to bribery, "through the insatiable avarice of our Christian princes."

We extract his short account of Cyprus, in which our readers will not fail to remark, that the manufacture of sugar seems to have been a great novelty to him:

"This island yieldeth to no place in fruitfulness or pleasure, being enriched with corn, oil, cheese, most sweet porks, sheep, (having tails that weigh more than twenty pounds) capers (growing upon pricking bushes) pomegranates, oranges, and like fruits; canes or reeds of sugar, (which they beat in mills, drawing out a water, which they seethe to make sugar,) with rich wines, (but gnawing or burning the stomach) odoriferous Cyprus trees, (whereof they make fires,) store of cotton, and many other blessings of nature. Near the Promontory Del' Gatto, so called of cats that use to kill serpents, they take falcons, which hawks the Governors are commanded to send to Constantinople. They sow corn in the month of October, and reap it in April. I know not how it comes to pass, that in this Island of Venus, all fruits taste of salt, which Venus loved well. And I thought that this was only proper to the place at which we landed, where they make salt, till many islanders affirmed to me, that the very earth, the sweet herbs, the beasts feeding there, and the fountains of waters, had a natural saltness. The houses are built after the manner of Asia, of a little stone, one roof high, and plain in the top, which is plastered, and there they eat and sleep in the open air.”

At Constantinople, he had an opportunity of seeing that most beautiful and magnificent animal, a cameleopard, at that period excessively rare; he thus describes it:

"Here be the ruins of a palace upon the very walls of the city, called the Palace of Constantine, wherein I did see an elephant, called Philo, by the Turks, and another beast newly brought out of Africa, (the mother of monsters) which beast is altogether unknown in our parts, and is called Surnapa by the people of Asia, Astanapa by others, and Giraffa by the Italians, the picture whereof I remember to have seen in the maps of Mercator; and, because the beast is very rare, I will describe his form as well as I can. His hair is red coloured,

with many black and white spots; I could scarce reach with the points of my fingers to the hinder part of his back, which grew higher and higher towards his foreshoulder, and his neck was thin and some three ells long, so as he easily turned his head in a moment to any part or corner of the room wherein he stood, putting it over the beams thereof, being built like a barn, and high (for the Turkish building, not unlike the building of Italy, both which I have formerly described) by reason whereof he many times put his nose in my neck, when I thought myself furthest distant from him, which familiarity of his I liked not; and howsoever the keepers assured me he would not hurt me, yet I avoided these his familiar kisses as much as I could. His body was slender, not greater, but much higher, than the body of a stag or hart, and his head and face was like to that of a stag, but the head was less and the face more beautiful: he had two horns, but short and scarce half a foot long; and in the forehead he had two bunches of flesh, his ears and feet like an ox, and his legs like a stag. The Janisary, my guide, did, in my name, and for me, give twenty aspers to the keeper of this beast."

As the history of this singular animal is not generally known, we may be allowed to state a few particulars connected with it. The first notice we have of it is in Agatharcides, who was President of the library of Alexandria about 177 years before Christ: his works on the Red Sea, in which this notice occurs, is preserved in the Bibliotheca of Photius, and likewise in Diodorus. If the Prænestine Mosaic was brought into Italy by Sylla, as Bergier, in his Histoire des Grands Chemins de l'Empire Romaine, and Gibbon, suppose; this affords the next notice of the cameleopard; for on this mosaic is a delineation of it. By other authors, however, and especially by Barthelemy, in an express and learned dissertation, this mosaic is supposed to be an offering of a freedman of Adrian, in memory of that Emperor's visit to Egypt: of this opinion Dr. Vincent, in his Navigation of the Ancients, seems to be. As, however, the delineation of the cameleopard is very inaccurate, it can scarcely be ascribed to an age posterior to that when the Romans had had an opportunity of securing the animal itself. For we have the testimony of Pliny, that it was first exhibited at Rome, by Julius Cæsar, during the Circean games. Varro mentions it, as having been, nearly about the same time, first seen at Alexandria. It is also mentioned and shortly described by Strabo, who lived in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.

After its first exhibition at Rome by Julius Cæsar, it seems to have been frequently introduced: ten appeared at one time in the reign of the Emperor Julian: and, on the conquest of Palmyira, Aurelian exhibited one at his triumph Heliodorus, the Greek bishop of Sicca, who is supposed to have lived in the fourth century, in his singular but amusing Romance, called

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Ethiopica, makes mention of it; and his description is more original and authentic than those of most of the old writers. According to him, it was brought from Axume, the capital of Ethiopia. (Heliod. Ethiop. lib. x. p. 509, Edit. 1611.) Oppian in his poem, called Cynegeticon, which was written in the reign of Caracalla, in the second century, gives a very full and accurate description of it. Dion Cassius, who lived in the third century, also mentions it. Heliodorus evidently writes from a personal inspection of this animal; and Cosmos, surnamed Indico Pleustes, or the Indian Navigator, who visited Ethiopia about the middle of the sixth century, remarks particularly that he observed with his own eyes the singular manner in which it is obliged to stoop down before it can drink. After this time we are not aware of any notice or description of it till it is mentioned by Politian, who lived at the close of the fifteenth century he saw one of these animals in the possession of Laurentius de Medici, which had been sent him by the Dey of Tunis. About the middle of the sixteenth century, it is mentioned and described by Bolen, Gillius, Thevet, Prosper Alpinus, Gesner, Aldrovandanus, and Busbequius. Bolen, Gillius, and Thevet, saw the animal itself at Cairo; and Prosper Alpinus, at Alexandria. Gesner and Aldrovandanus describe one sent to the Emperor of Germany in 1559 by the Sultan of Babylon. Busbequius, who went on an embassy to Constanti nople, about the same period, informs us that there had been one in that city a short time before his arrival, but that it was dead. He, however, had the skeleton taken up, examined it carefully, and has given a short but accurate description of it (Busbequius, Epist. 1. p. 71.)*

Notwithstanding these testimonies to the existence of the cameleopard, great doubts were entertained on the subject even till the middle of the last century. In 1764, there was sent to the Academy of Sciences at Paris a drawing and description of this animal from the Cape of Good Hope; before this time it was not known to inhabit the South of Africa. Two years afterwards a young one, stuffed, was sent to Leyden. From these and other sources, Buffon was enabled to describe it accurately, and to give all its principal dimensions. It was

*We cannot permit the opportunity afforded by this cursory and incidental notice of Busbequius to pass by, without referring our readers to the high and merited encomium passed by Gibbon on this Author, (Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. v. 8vo. Edition, p. 580.) We

We may, perhaps, before long devote an article to Busbequius. For some other notices of the cameleopard in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Buffon Hist. Quad. vol. vi.

made still much better known by the travels of Vaillant in Southern Africa; but it must be of rare occurrence there, as Mr. Burchel, one of our latest travellers, who explored this part of the world most thoroughly, and with great zeal for natural history, does not appear to have met with one alive, though he traced their steps.

Passing over altogether the account of the wars in Ireland against Tyrone, which, however, contains many particulars not noticed in any history of that country with which we are acquainted, we shall introduce our readers to the third portion of Fynes Moryson's volume, viz. the Discourse upon several heads through the said several dominions.

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The title of the first chapter is, that the visiting of foreign countries is good and profitable-but to whom, and how far? There is a curious mixture (by no means uncommon, however, at the period our author lived) in this chapter, of quaint and far-fetched remarks, pedantic allusions to the classics, and strong good sense of this, the following short sentence, with which he introduces the first chapter, is an instance. "I will not speak of the experience thereby attained, which instincteth the most dull and simple, as the sun by his beams coloureth the passenger intended nothing less than to be so coloured; and which neither by hearing nor any sense can so easily be gained, as by the eyes. For, since nothing is in the understanding, which hath not first been in some of the senses, surely, among the senses, which are (as it were) our sentinels and watchmen, to spy out all dangers, and conduct us through the thorny labyrinth of this life's pilgrimage, not any one is so vigilant, so nimble, so wary, nor by many degrees so trusty, as the sight, according to the saying of the poet:

Segnius irritant animos delapsa per aures,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.

Less doth it move the mind that beats the ears
Than what before the faithful eye appears.

He first enumerates those who ought not to travel: "women, for suspicion of chastity, are most unfit for this course; neither yet will I give unlimited liberty to married men." He is also against very old men, and children of unripe years, travelling in foreign countries. Is he correct in his account of the law at the time he wrote, when he says

"To conclude, I think with Plato, that before any man take this course, he must obtain leave of the magistrate, as the custom is in England, where none but merchants may without leave go out of the island, to the end that suspected persons may be kept at home, lest not

being well instructed in the true religion, they should be seduced by Papists!" (Part iii. p. 3.)

The concluding paragraph is very characteristic of the literary taste of the age in which our author lived: our readers will not fail to notice the strange introduction of Mercury.

"Let us imitate the storks, swallows, and cranes, which, like the nomades, yearly follow their circuits, and follow the sun, without suffering any distemper of the seasons; the fixed stars have not such power over inferior bodies, as the wandering planets. Running water is sweet, but standing pools stink; take away idleness, and the bait of all vice is taken away. Men were created to move, as birds to fly; what they learn by nature, that reason joined to nature teacheth us. Nothing can be added to the worthy praises of him, as the poet saith ;

Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes :

Who many men's manners hath seen,

And hath in many cities been.

"In one word, I will say what can be said upon this subject; every soil is to a valiant man his own country, as the sea to the fishes. We are citizens of the whole world, yea, not of this world, but of that to come; all our life is a pilgrimage. God for his only begotten Son's sake, (the true Mercury of travellers,) bring us that are here strangers safely into our true country."

The second chapter contains precepts for travellers which may instruct the inexperienced. His third precept exactly corresponds with his own practice as exhibited in the contents of his book, and may be of service even to travellers of the present day, too many of whom travel, they know not why, or for what object.

"Let a traveller observe the underwritten things, and of them. some curiously, some slightly, as he shall judge them fit for his purpose. He shall observe the fruitfulness of each country, and the things wherewith it aboundeth, as the mines of metals and precious stones, the chief laws and customs of the workers in those mines, also baths and the quality of the water, with the diseases for the curing whereof it is most proper, the names, springs, and courses of rivers, the pleasant fountains, the abundance or rarity of pastures, groves, wood, corn, and fruits, the rare and precious plants, the rare and proper beasts, the prices of necessary things, and what he daily spends in his diet and horsemeat, and in hiring horses or coaches, the soil of every day's journey, the plenty of fishes or flesh, the kinds of meat or drink, with the sauces, and the rarer manners of dressing meats, the country's expense in apparel, with their constancy or fickleness in wearing it, the races of horses, as the gianets of Spain;