VII. 
ALEXANDRIA. 395 
Alexandria, particularly its prodigious cisterns, ^}}^^^' 
which are coeval with the city, because they 
have so often been described. The difficulty of 
" knowing when to have done," is perhaps 
never more sensibly felt, than in a territory so 
fertile of resources as that we are now leaving. 
The time is perhaps not distant, when Alex- 
andria alone, a city once so vain of its great 
reputation and the rank it held among the Pagan 
states, shall again become the resort, if not the 
residence, of learned men, who will dedicate 
their time and their talents to a better investi- 
gation of its interesting antiquities '. So little 
are we acquainted with its valuable remains, 
that not a single excavation for purposes of dis- 
covery has yet been begun ; nor is there any 
thing published with regard to its modern his- 
tory, excepting the observations that have 
resulted from the hasty survey made of its for- 
lorn and desolated havens, by a few travellers 
whose transitory visits ended almost with the 
days of their arrivaP. Scarcely had we felt 
(1) A local work of this kind, restricted entirely to the Antiquities 
of Alexandria, might complete one of the most splendid and valuable 
publications which have yet been added to the archives of taste and 
of literature. 
(2) A very curious instance is afforded by Bruce, who wrote an 
account of Alexandria, and, literally, did not spend one entire day in 
the city. He was at sea on the morning of the twentieth of June, 1768, 
previously 
