"228 



THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA.* 



[EDINBUEGH REVIEW, OCTOBEE, 1857.] 



COPIOUS, even to excess, as is the literary labour of our 

 age, and ever seeking new- topics or new methods of 

 vivifying old ones, there are yet subjects to be found, either 

 not touched upon at all, or scantily and incidentally treated 

 without due regard to their proper value. Void places of 

 this kind still occur in the history of men and nations ; gaps 

 which it will belong to future genius and research to fill up, 

 by aid .of the fresh materials ever accumulating around us. 

 The laborious activity of German literature has gone farther 

 than that of any other country, in finding such new fields 

 and fertilising them by its industry. But others yet remain 

 to be opened, even in the records of human events ; still more 

 in the great domain of natural history and the physical 

 sciences. Here especially the rapid growth of knowledge has 

 created the need of fresh divisions in every part ; of altered 

 nomenclature ; and particular treatises on topics, the in- 

 creasing importance of which compels their separation from 

 others with which they were before associated. 



In a recent article of this Review, we referred to the 

 ' Physical Greography of the Sea,' as one of the many 

 instances in which science has required and adopted this 



* The Mediterranean. A Memoir Physical, Historical, and Nautical. By 

 Rear-Admiral William Henry Smyth, K.S.F., D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. London, 

 1854. 



This Article was written in great part during a yoyage to Syria, Palestine, 

 and Egypt in 1857. But I may speak of it as founded on more than twenty 

 previous voyages throughout every part of the Mediterranean Sea. 



