a ee hee 
ELECTED INTO THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS. 135 
ELECTION OF BAILLY INTO THE ACADEMY OF IN- 
SCRIPTIONS. 
In speaking of the pretended identity of the Atlantis, 
or of the kingdom of Ophir under Solomon with America, 
Bailly says, in his fourteenth letter to Voltaire: “Those 
ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but not to the 
philosophic age.” And elsewhere (in the twenty-first 
letter) we read these words: “ Do not fear that I shall 
fatigue you by heavy erudition.” ‘To have supposed that 
erudition could be heavy and be deficient in philosophy, 
was for certain people of a secondary order an unpar- 
donable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a 
sentiment of hate, arm themselves with a critical micro- 
scope, and painfully seek out imperfections in the innu- 
merable quotations with which Bailly had strengthened 
himself. The harvest was not abundant; yet, these 
eager ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, 
some interpretations that might be contested. Their joy 
then knew no bounds. Bailly was treated with haughty 
disdain: “ His literary erudition was very superficial ; 
he had not the key of the sanctuary of antiquity; he was 
everywhere deficient in languages.” 
That it might not be supposed that these sepisle. 
had any reference to Oriental literature, Bailly’s adver- 
saries added: “that he had not the least tincture of the 
ancient languages; that he did not know Latin.” 
He did not know Latin? And do you not see, you 
stupid enemies of the great Astronomer, that if it had 
been possible to compose such learned works as The His- 
tory of Astronomy, and The Letters on the Atlantis, with- 
out referring to the original texts, by using translations 
only, you would no longer have preserved any impor- 
