96 LECTURES. 



own country, by his numerous writings drew general attention to this 

 subject, and he has written upon it with equal taste and erudition. 



In the same city a most interesting collection of ancient maps has 

 been organized and brought into chronological and geographical order, 

 and put up as a separate branch of the Imperial Library, especially 

 through the efforts of that enlightened and indefatigable French geo- 

 grapher, the celebrated M. Jomard. He has added quite a new branch 

 to that magnificent establishment, in the former catalogues of which 

 we find the maps and globes scarcely mentioned as an essential element 

 of the collection. They were mixed up with the books or the engrav- 

 ings ; or they were considered, at the most, as a sort of curiosities, to 

 adorn the walls of the rooms, as is still the case in the greater part of 

 our old libraries. A good degree of order and light has also been in- 

 troduced into the chaos of old surveys, maps, charts, and sketches — 

 until lately in a most deplorable state of disorder and neglect — in the 

 archives of the Depot de la Marine, and in those of the Depot de la 

 Guerre in Paris. The same has been done in other collections, in which 

 ancient maps, more by chance than by design, were preserved. 



In England, a vast collection of old maps, for the greater part in 

 manuscript, has lately been brought together by the eftbrts of dif- 

 ferent distinguished gentlemen, and has been added as an essential 

 department to the British Museum, The learned Sir Frederick 

 Madden has published a complete catalogue of these maps, which fills 

 two or three volumes. And as in the British Museum, so, too, in 

 many other public and private collections of Europe, more care is 

 now taken than formerly in saving and collecting old atlasses, globes, 

 charts, and navigator's guides, which are beginning more and more 

 to be considered, not as mere curiosities, but as most valuable acqui- 

 sitions. 



The earliest historians of geography contented themselves with 

 sometimes adorning their works with maps composed by themselves, 

 to represent- the views of the ancients. But such factitious represen- 

 tations are no longer found satisfactory; so that, at length, some his- 

 torians have begun to copy and publish the old maps with all their 

 peculiarities, precisely as the ancient cosmographers and discoverers 

 drew them with their own hands. 



One of the first who attempted this was the celebrated Polish sa- 

 vant. Professor Lelewel, who copied and engraved with his own hand 

 a great number of valuable old maps, and published them with a 

 copious and learned commentary. 



The celebrated and most excellent Portuguese scholar, the Vicomte 

 de Santarem, next produced a collection of most brilliant fac-similes 

 of ancient maps, especially of those connected with the history of 

 Africa, which he published and annotated, and which he further illus- 

 trated by a series of learned and valuable disquisitions on the history 

 of cosmography and chartography. 



With the same object, and in the same manner, the French geo- 

 grapher M. Jomard, already mentioned as the creating and organ- 

 izing spirit of the depot of maps and charts in Paris, has been pre- 

 paring, during a series of years, and has now begun to publish, the 



