VOL. XLIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 583 



friar was on a mission in Georgia for above l6 years ; he has returned about 2 

 years ; he is a grave sober man, who gives an historical account of the virtues 

 and vices, good and evil, of that country, with plainness and candour. The 

 usual introduction and security of these missionaries is the pretence to the 

 practice of physic, that in destroying bodies they may save souls : so that this 

 honest man, who is extremely ignorant, was in high reputation both as physi- 

 cian and confessor. It was therefore impossible, as he himself observes, that 

 either the public or private practice of inoculation could be concealed from him ; 

 but he has most solemnly declared to Mr. P. repeatedly, that he never heard 

 one word about it at Akalsike, Imirette, or Tifflis ; he is persuaded, that it has 

 never been known among them. He has often and frequently attended the 

 small-pox, which is almost certain death there ; and generally, if not always, of 

 the confluent kind. 



6. Printing was introduced by an Hungarian renegado, who called himself 

 Ibrahim EfFendi : it had no long continuance. The copies are not many, and 

 are now very dear and scarce ; few even to be bought. The maps did not exceed 

 3 or 4; one of Persia, one of the Bosphorus, and one of the Euxinus, or Black- 

 sea ; they are not to be found but in private hands. All our maps of these 

 countries are extremely imperfect and incorrect. The jealousy and superstition 

 of the people, though the government should permit Christians to raise any 

 printing-house, would be an irresistible impediment ; and they are too ignorant 

 themselves to be ever capable of doing it. The adoptive son of this Ibrahim 

 EfFendi, who bears the same name, is secretary under the interpreter of the 

 Porte ; he has all the materials for printing, but never could find, since his 

 father's death, and during Sultan Mahmud's reign, money to carry it on. The 

 question is now, whether Sultan Osman is not too strict a mussulman to continue 

 the permission. 



7. The progress of arts and sciences, and literature, seems travelling on, gra- 

 datim, to the westward, from Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, thence 

 to the west of Europe, and he supposes at last to America. We find few traces 

 in the east : the Greeks, who should be the depositaries of them, are the same 

 Greeks they ever were. Homines contentionis cupidiores quam veritatis. They 

 have retained all the vices, imperfections, ill habitudes, of their ancestors ; but 

 have lost all their public spirit, and public virtues. The clergy, who should 

 support the whole machine of learning, are themselves the source of ignorance; 

 all their talents and acquisitions consist in bribing among the Turks, and sollicit- 

 ing to destroy one patriarch, in order to make another ; to raise from a curacy 

 to a bishoprick, and to exchange from an indifferent one to a better. They 

 endeavour to cultivate literal Greek, and some study it, but advance no further. 

 There are neither grammarians, critics, historians, nor philosophers, among 



