ATTAINMENTS IN PROFOUND LITERARY INQUIRIES. 69 



The foregoing illustration is immediately related to the 

 third point of view, under which I have proposed to regard 

 the advantages of uniting classical with scientific attainments, 

 which is, the direct utility of the latter in conducting the more 

 profound class of inquiries into the history and literature of 

 past ages. In these, scientific, knowledge, both mathematical 

 and physical, may become available, either as direct means of 

 research, or as habituating the mind to the methodical use and 

 combination of the logical instruments common to every spe- 

 cies of intellectual inquiry; and which may all be referred to ana- 

 lysis, comparison, induction, and generalization. 



Among the most splendid and interesting discoveries in 

 Archaeology which have yet been accomplished, must be ranked 

 the recovery of some of the lost works and lost authors of an- 

 cient Greece and Rome, in the examination of what have been 

 termed Palimpsest Manuscripts, or Codices rescript^ by M. 

 Angelo Mai, Librarian of the Vatican*; the discovery of the 

 method of deciphering the Hieroglyphics of Egypt, by the late 

 Dr. Young, with its further development and extensive appli- 

 cation by MM. Champollion; and the translation of the Cu- 

 neiform or Arrow-headed inscriptions of Persepolis, which has 



have supposed to be that mentioned by Herodotus. In this particular case 

 the path of the moon's umbra might, by such a correction, be thrown so 

 much further north, as to prevent the eclipse being total in any part of 

 Asia Minor. But still it would remain the only one that can be at all 

 adapted to the account given by Herodotus ; since there is no other that 

 could possibly be central in, or near, any part of Asia Minor, from the year 

 650 B.C. to 580 B.C. ; a period which far exceeds the probable limits of 

 time wherein this singular phenomenon must have taken place, so as to be 

 reconcilable to any received system of chronology." 



* The Codices rescript! are manuscripts, which at periods long subsequent 

 to those in which they were written, were erased, more or less effectually, 

 so as to allow of another work being written upon the same material, 

 usually parchment or vellum. Whether this practice, which appears to have 

 prevailed very extensively in the darker ages, arose from the scarcity of ma- 

 terials for writing, or merely from the indolence and bigotry of the monastic 

 scribes, is uncertain. In many cases the more ancient work has been erased, 

 in order to make room for one far less valuable : thus, in some cases, the 

 life of a Popish saint, or a collection of fables, has been substituted for a 

 rhetorical treatise, or an historical narrative, by a Greek or Roman author, 

 and the latter have occasionally taken the place of an ancient copy of the 

 Gospels. M. Mai, following, but with far greater success, the example of 

 previous scholars, has ingeniously revived the erased work, in many in- 

 stances, so as to be able to read and transcribe it ; and he has thus effected 

 the restoration of various works supposed to be lost, among which are the 

 Books of Cicero De Re Publica, and the Epistles of the scarcely less cele- 

 brated orator Fronto, of whose writings little more was previously known, 

 than a few scattered sentences preserved in the works of other authors. 

 "An Historical Account of the Discoveries made in Palimpsest Manuscripts," 

 from the pen of Archdeacon Nares, will be found in the Transactions of the 

 Royal Society of Literature, vol. i. p. 122. 



