278 Mr Forbes's Physical Notices of the Bay of Naples. 



pearance of the lake as soon as nature liad completed the ope- 

 ration for which she put so marvellous and eccentric a train 

 of wheels in motion. Let all these be accounted for by the 

 individual fancy of the theorist; but I put it to the candid 

 inquirer, whether we ought not to view with suspicion a theory 

 consisting of a series of hypotheses involving a chain of inde- 

 pendent, unrecorded, and imaginary events, and to which 

 even analogy forms no guide, emanating in a spirit like that 

 which Gothe displayed in his more popular works, romantic 

 rather than profound, resembling more the workings of an 

 imaginative disposition than the patient inductions of the na- 

 tural inquirer, — like the Miltonic sphere, composed of 



" Cycle and Epicycle scribbled o'er. 

 To save appearances." 



If it now be asked to what theory I attach myself, I answer 

 that I am disposed to the second of those above enumerated, 

 which attributes the apparent changes of the water line to an 

 alternate depression and elevation of the land, without, how- 

 ever, altogether setting aside the first, which infers an actual 

 change of level in the Mediterranean ; for in some cases philo- 

 sophers have not yet been enabled to separate the existence of 

 such a real from an apparent motion. In order, however, to 

 revive with effect an explanation which of late years has been 

 somewhat thrown into shade by the more showy hypothesis 

 of a lake, I shall first briefly state the advantages of the ar» 

 gument by such a supposition, and then endeavour to answer 

 the objections which have been urged against it, the most 

 weighty of which we have already candidly stated. By com- 

 bining some collateral testimonies to which sufficient attention 

 has not been paid, I hope to make out a clearer case for this 

 hypothesis than has yet been effected. 



In the Jirst place, then, the present position of the temple 

 below high water-mark indicates some cause in action which 

 the lacustrine theory does not explain. This important fact 

 has been wholly misrepresented by Gothe, who, in the sections 

 given by him, under the pretence of showing the relative levels 

 of the sea, the temple, and the supposed lake, he actually 

 places the second thirty-two feet above the first instead of one 



