120 BAILLY. 
skepticism. According to him, Plato spoke seriously to 
the Athenians of a learned, polished people, but destroyed 
and forgotten. Only, he totally repudiates the idea of 
the Canaries being the remains of the ancient country of 
the Atlantide, and now engulfed. Bailly rather places 
that nation at Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Nova Zembla, 
whose climate may have changed. We should also have 
to seek for the Garden of the Hesperides near the Pole; 
in short, the fable of the Phoenix may have arisen in the 
Gulf of the Obi, in a region where we must suppose the 
sun to have been annually absent during sixty-five days. 
It is evident, in many passages, that Bailly is himself 
surprised at the singularity of his own conclusions, and 
fears that his readers may rather regard them as jokes. 
He therefore exclaims, “ My pen would not find expres- 
sions for thoughts which I did not believe to be true.” 
Let us add, that no effort is painful to him. Bailly calls 
successively to his aid astronomy, history, supported by 
vast erudition, philology, the systems of Mairan, of Buf- 
fon, relatively to the heat appertaining to the earth. He 
does not forget, using his own words, “that in the human 
species, still more sensitive than curious, more anxious 
for pleasure than for instruction, nothing pleases gener- 
ally, or for a long time, unless the style is agreeable ; 
that dry truth is killed by ennui!” Yet Bailly makes 
few proselytes ; and a species of instinct determines men 
of science to despise the fruits of so persevering a labour; 
and D’Alembert goes so far as to tax them with poverty, 
even with hollow ideas, with vain and ridiculous efforts ; 
he goes so far as to call Bailly, relatively to his letters, 
the eluminated brother. Voltaire is, on the contrary, 
very polite and very academical in his communications 
with our author. The renown of the Brahmins is dear 
