in round numbers, 50,000,000 square miles, while the water covers 145,000,000. Of these fifty millions of square miles but a small portion was known to the ancients and with that portion only we have to do in an outline of geography intended for the illustration of the ancient writers, and for the use of the classical student.

Almost every thing important in this point of view is comprehended within the countries, states, and empires which border on the Mediterranean, or touch, in some point, either that body of water, or the gulfs and minor seas connected with it.1

Proposing to ourselves, then, a tour of the Mediterranean and its cognate waters, let us start from Calpe (the Rock of Gibraltar) which the ancients called one of the Pillars of Hercules, and travel round all the indentations of the coast, with our right shoulder to the sea, till we arrive at Abyla, the other pillar, on the African side of the fretum Herculeum. If we describe, in this imaginary progress, every country on the shore of which we set foot, through all its extent, dependencies, and peculiarities during the classical ages, we shall have performed much of what is required for throwing light on the Classics.

1 "The great object of travelling," says Dr Samuel Johnson, "is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world :—the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our laws, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean."

In this circuit, we shall find ourselves successively, -in the Spanish Peninsula ;-in Gaul, having the Alps, and the river Rhine from source to mouth, for its eastern boundary;-in Germany, as forming part of the great Basin of the Rhine;—in Italy, bounded by the Alps and the sea;—in Illyricum, Dalmatia, and Epirus;-in Peloponnesus, Greece Proper, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, and Moesia: then, ascending the Danube to its source, we shall find ourselves, as we follow the current downward, successively in Rhaetia, Vindelicia, Noricum, Pannonia, and Dacia. Once more skirting the Euxine, we shall pass the Crimea, Sarmatia, Colehis, Armenia, Asia (Minor); then traverse Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt; and proceed along the northern coast of Africa, through the territory of Cyrene, Carthage, Numidia, and Mauritania, till we are once more on the Meridian from which we started.

Thus, by making the Tour of the Mediterranean and its tributary seas, and describing all the countries we touch upon, not forgetting the Islands connected with each, we shall have almost exhausted the subject of Classical Geography, as far at least as it ought to be carried in schools or colleges. I say almost; for, after having completed the circuit of what the Romans called mare nostrum, with all its dependencies, it may be well to make two digressions; one to the Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great; and the other to the ancient

geography of our own island. Beyond these, little is required for the classical student to know.

In arranging the particular description and details of the several countries that come within the scope of these Elements, I shall proceed in conformity with the following views and principles.

1. In studying the geography of any country, the first thing to be done, after settling its boundaries, its length and breadth, and its latitude and longitude, is to acquire a knowledge, not of its civil divisions, which are conventional and fluctuating, but of its physical characters. Of these characters, which are permanent and impressed on the globe by the hand of nature, the most striking are the following: -1. The line of coast where the country is maritime,

-2. The mountains, either single, in groups, or in long ranges,-3. The rivers, with their complement of tributary streams,—and 4. the slopes and lower grounds, level or undulating, which are bounded on either side by the mountain ranges, and are at once watered and drained by the main river and its tributaries. These tracts of country, which are valleys upon a large scale, we call Basins, distinguishing them individually by the name of the main river that belongs to them, as when we speak of the Basin of the Po, of the Duèro, of the Rhine.1

To be made acquainted with the physical features

1 See Appendix. Note E.

above enumerated, their names, numbers, and relative positions, is as necessary to the young geographer, as a knowledge of the bones and great bloodvessels of the human frame is to the young anatomist. It is, in both cases, the foundation on which subsequent acquirements ought to be reared.

It is not meant to be affirmed, that the enumeration just given of the natural subdivisions of the Earth's surface furnishes a principle of universal application, or that it will form the basis of a geographical arrangement for every part of the world. The vast sandy desert that occupies so much of the broadest part of Africa, the Karroos that stretch northward almost interminably from the Cape of Good Hope, the Llanos and Pampas of South, and the Prairies and Savannahs of North America, and the great belt of tableland which forms the central region of Asia,—all these are large constituent portions of the surface of the globe, in which it would be useless to attempt such distribution of the land into basins, or river-systems. But to the countries in the circuit of the Mediterranean the principle will be found applicable in practice, and to an extent that will greatly simplify and facilitate the acquisition of geographical knowledge.

2. When the learner has been thus made acquainted with the physical aspect of the country, with the principal chains of mountains,—with the names and courses of the main rivers and of the

principal tributaries which fall into them on both sides, and with the tracts of country which they permeate in all directions,-the next step is to follow each of the main rivers from the source downwards, observing, as we go along, what cities or towns of importance are either divided by it, or close upon it, or at a moderate distance from either bank. If the same process be adopted with the principal tributary streams, and if, in addition, the Towns and Ports on the sea-coast, where the country is maritime, be noted and named in their order, it will be found that very few places of consequence have been omitted. Their positions will be thus advantageously fixed in the memory when they are associated with the rivers, and seas, and basins, to which they belong. This knowledge will be still better secured, and the picture of the country in the learner's mind be made more vivid, if the first lines of geography be taught, not by presenting to the eye the confounding intricacy of an engraved and lettered map, but by means of a board, on which nothing but the great natural features and palpable realities shall be delineated; and where no river, or tributary stream, or town shall be inserted, except those which are to form the ground-work of the instruction. The representation of the country on the board being thus freed from all distracting details and the names omitted, the eye and the mind of the learner are no longer perplexed by a multiplicity of objects. Let