THE 
MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 
Vol. 60. No. 414. | 
SEPT. 1, 1825. 
[ Price 2s. 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
The Ben of the Tizzr. 
qT this day of speculation and 
schemes to make money breed 
money—out doing, almost, the outdoings 
of our forefathers of South-Sea Bubble 
memory, and others which might be 
enumerated only to be laughed at or 
lamented, I have to suggest one, in 
which there probably will be smalb 
hazard, great profit, and honour in- 
finite, unaccompanied by the sad re- 
flection of the ruin of the luckless many 
being worked upon the weal of the for- 
tunate few. 
What I have to propose, has been 
seriously meditated by others, long time 
ago, has recently been undertaken on 
a limited scale, and was but the other 
day abandoned as hopeless. Such is, 
honestly, the state of the question ; 
nor will I seek to raise ungrounded 
expections of a happier result, but con- 
tent myself with setting forth things as 
they are, and leave their fruition to 
better heads and longer purses than 
were possessed by those who tried the 
experiment, and failed. 
In the bed of the Tiber, are sup- 
posed to be buried very many of the 
remains of Rome’s antiquities, in mar- 
ble and in brass, in gold and in silver, 
and in precious stones. If it be pos- 
sible to bring these to light, one would 
think they must surely come by means 
of the wealth and enterprize, the art 
and science, and the laudable ambition 
of the English. . 
May it not be affirmed, without the 
hazard of contradiction, that few 
rivers, if any, are so muddy as. is 
the. Tiber; and, if the world wait 
_ the efforts of the modern Romans to 
cleanse it of its accumulated filth, in 
the view of recovering its buried trea- 
sures, the world will have long to. wait, 
und will, at length, be disappointed. If 
this classic river were only, for the 
purpose, to be placed, for a season, at 
the disposal of the British capitalists, 
at this particular juncture, when. they 
are.seeking throughout the world for 
proper objects wherein to employ their 
snperabundant wealth; the work, were 
Montuty Mac. No, 414, 
it never so vast, would be begun and 
ended in half the time that the bab- 
bling Italians would settle, even in idea, 
how to go about it. 
~ Could Cardinal Polignac, in the mid- 
dle of the eighteenth century, have 
commanded British capital and British 
enterprize of early in the nineteenth, he 
had, of a certainty, left the bed of the 
Tiber, at Rome, as barren of all that 
was ancient, rich, or rare, as now are 
our eternally-searched and re-searched 
book-stalls in England. Cardinal Po- 
lignac resided, at Rome, many years as 
ambassador from Louis XV.; and we 
are informed, that while he was in that 
city, he entertained a project for turn- 
ing the course of the Tiber, for a short 
time, and to dig in the bed of that river 
for the remains of antiquity, which he 
supposed had been thrown into it. 
“In all the civil wars,” said he, “ the 
party that prevailed threw, into the 
Tiber, the statues of the opposite party. 
They must still remain there. I have 
never heard that any of them have ever 
een taken out; and they are too heavy 
materials to be carried away by the 
stream of the river’? The Cardinal 
used to complain that he was not rich 
enough to carry the project into exe- 
cution, even if the Pope, by whom he 
was much beloved, would have given 
him all the necessary powers. 
Here, “ Ye gentlemen of England 
who live at home at ease,” with more 
money than ye know what to do with, 
and who are about to bury your sur- 
plus thousands in the mines of Mexico, 
Peru, Chili, Potosi, and others—here is 
an opening for your enterprizing spirit, 
and a most interesting employment for 
your unproductive capital. Here is a 
harvest of honour and glory, wealth 
and immortality. The Pope, now reign- 
ing, is disposed to grant any reasonable 
powers to the English, in gratitude for 
political services; and this exploit. 
would not only distinguish his pon- 
tificate, but, would also greatly enrich 
his treasury, which seldom or never 
overflows. 
To the wealth and spirit, the art and 
science, the learning and taste of the 
English, ave foreigners indebted “cd 
their 
