84 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



as the seas of the Levant, and thus appropriated 

 to herself the commerce of it ; while, by her inti- 

 mate alliances with the nations who can no longer 

 have an interest separate from hers, she has accom- 

 plished the great work of social order, the fraterni- 

 zation of mankind # . 



Before the island ©f Malta became the domain 

 of the Brotherhood of St. John of Jerusalem, it 

 had passed successively into the hands of several 

 potentates. From the Carthaginians down to the 

 Arabs it underwent a frequent change of masters j 

 the vestiges of antiquity in it are accordingly not 

 few. There was printed at Malta itself, in 1794, 

 a work in Italian, on the subject of those ancient 

 remains, produced from researches made by 

 digging up the ground in 1788 -f\ 



If certain persons are to be believed, the Maltese 

 language is still more ancient than most of the 

 ruins discovered thefe, though it has long passed 

 for an uncouth mixture of Arabic and Italian. A 

 learned gentleman of Malta, Antonio Vassali, has 



* This, translated into the language of truth, means unlimited 

 rejection to the tyrannical rule of, they say, thirty millions of - 

 despots. — H. H. 



•j- Degli Apanzi di alchuni antichissimi Edifici, scoperti in Mal- 

 ta; Dissertatione storica-criticadel March. Barbaro Archit. cofr 

 ^opiose Annotazione del medezimo Autore, 1 794, in 4to. Eg. 



lately 



