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 Atlantidae, 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 Pho3nix 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 illuminated brother. Voltaire is, on the contrary, 

 very polite and very academical in his communications 

 with our author. The renown of the Brahmins is dear 



