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danger may be enhanced, if he has been deeply impressed by the 
force of observations of such a tendency which have proceeded 
from the pen of any single vigorous and competent author. 
Let me at once confess that this last named extreme is the one 
into which I feel that I am most liable to fall. It is possible that 
I may have allowed myself to be unduly influenced by the following 
comment of Sir Charles Lyell, in his well-known work entitled 
Principles of Geology (vol. ii. bk. ii. part 2, chap, ii.) : — “ We have 
no hesitation in saying, that had the buried cities never been 
discovered, the accounts transmitted to us of their tragical end 
would have been discredited by the majority, so vague and general 
are the narratives, or so long subsequent to the event” (2nd edit.). 
I have read these words in the form in which they have long 
been known to me. But it is right to reproduce them in the slightly 
modified shape in which they are given by their author in the 
latest edition of his work : — “ It is worthy, however, of remark, 
that had the buried cities never been discovered, the accounts 
transmitted to us by their tragical end might well have been 
discredited by the majority, so vague and general are the narratives, 
or so long subsequent to the event ” (ed. 12th, 1875). 
How far would such unbelief have been reasonable ] This is the 
question which I desire to submit to the present assembly. We hear 
judges imploring juries (with what success 1 know not) to banish 
from their minds all extraneous considerations, and listen to the 
evidence alone. With a similar request, I proceed to summon the 
witnesses in the case before us. 
They belong to a band of men of considerable eminence in 
literature ; some of them coming near the highest rank, some perhaps 
actually attaining it. I mention them in the order in which I 
propose to call them. They are as follows: — the poet Martial; the 
biographer and philosopher, Plutarch ; the poet Statius ; the histo- 
rians Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius ; and the letter-writer, the younger 
Pliny. These are all in the strictest sense of the words contemporary 
witnesses, having been in a.d. 79, some 1800 years ago, all young 
men, or in the prime of life. Seneca, who might have proved useful 
to us, had been put to death by Nero sixteen years earlier, in a.d. 63; 
and the elder Pliny, the naturalist, who would probably have 
saved us from all trouble in the matter, perished, as I shall have 
