strictly punctual in returning answers to all his correspondents. He rose at an early hour, and generally wrote all his letters before breakfast. · The first voyage of Captain Cook was undertaken in 1768, at the request of the Royal Society, to observe the Transit of Venus over the Sun, when Sir Edward Hawke was First Lord of the Admiralty. On the return of Captain Cook a second voyage was undertaken in 1772, the direction of which fell on Lord Sandwich, who had succeeded Sir E. Hawke. Our gallant circumnavigator's third voyage in 1776, was equally under the direction of Lord Sandwich. About the time when Captain Cook sailed on his second voyage in 1772, an opinion beginning to prevail that the seas surrounding the Pole were, in summer at least, open, the Honourable Captain C. J. Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, having been appointed to command two vessels, the Race-horse, and Carcass, sailed in June 1773, and on the 27th of July nearly reached to the 81st degree of northern latitude; where he found an eternal barrier of ice, which he traced from the coast of Spitzbergen, till by its running to the southward it appeared to be fixed to the shores of Greenland. 2. An inquiry into the management of Greenwich Hospital, having been introduced, in 1779, into the House of Lords; after an investigation which lasted nearly three months, the conduct of the Earl of Sandwich, by the concurrent depositions of many respectable witnesses, appeared to have been eminently useful to the interests and management of the hospital. On the 7th of June 1779, the following resolutions were reported, and agreed to by the House of Lords : 1. That nothing has appeared in the course of this inquiry which calls for any interposition of the Legislature with regard to the management of Greenwich Hospital, or which makes the same necessary or proper. That the book which was referred to this committee, intituled, "The Case of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, at Greentwich," contains a groundless and malicious misrepresentation of the conduct of the Earl of Sandwich, and others the Commissioners, Directors, and Officers of Greenwich Hospital, with regard to the management thereof. 3. That it has appeared to this committee, that the revenues of Greenwich Hospital have been considerably increased, the buildings much enlarged and rendered more commodious, and the number of pensioners greatly augmented, during the time in which the Earl of Sandwich has been First Lord of the Admiralty; who has upon all occasions shewn great attention and impartiality in forwarding the true end of that noble foundation. In the month of March 1782, on the change of administration, Lord Sandwich appears to have resigned his station of First Lord of the Admiralty*, in which he was succeeded on the thirteenth of the same month by Lord Keppel. After the resignation of The Rangership of the Parks in January 1784, Lord Sandwich held no employment under Government during the remainder of his life, which terminated at his house in London on the thirteenth of April 1792. We have given our naval readers an abstract of Mr. Cooke's Memoirs + of this nobleman, as we fear the high price of his book (two guineas) will prevent many from being able to peruse them. If we cannot agree in every respect with the worthy biographer, we must own ourselves much gratified with the zeal which he displays for the character of his Friend, and for the able and interesting manner in which he endeavours to support the opinion, that the late Earl of Sandwich was a 66 great and amiable man." On the twelfth day of July, N. S. 1738, Lord Sandwich embarked from Leghorn on board The Anne Galley, an English ship of about 300 tons, and 16 cannon, to perform the periplus of the Mediterranean, which had long been a favourite object in his mind. In the course of this voyage, an account of which is now rendered particularly interesting, by the important scene of naval transactions now carrying on in that quarter-his Lordship visited, and gives a correct account, among others, of the following places :-LEGHORN, called by the Romans Portus Liburnus; the island of ELBA, with its two forts, Porto Ferraio, and Porto Longone; CORSICA, called by the antients Cyrnus, from the name of Hercules's son, first inhabited by the Etrurians; SARDINIA, noticed by Horace (L. i. O. 31.) for its fertility; CAPREA, of notorious memory, formerly a colony of Teleboans, a * First Lords of the Admiralty, from Lord Anson. LORD ANSON. June 19, 1762, Earl of Hallifax. Jan. 12, 1771, Earl of Sandwich. April 8, 1783, Viscount Keppel. + They extend to 40 pages. people of Acarnia, a province of Epirus; SICILY, antiently called Trinacria, from the triangular figure of it, rpía axpa, signifying the three promontories; PALERMO, anciently called Panormus; MOREA, anciently the Peloponnesus; SERIGO, the ancient Cythera; MILO, memorable for Athenian barbarity, who put to death, after the Island had surrendered at discretion, all that were of age to bear arms, and made slaves of the women and children; EGINA, an island which still preserves its name; Piræum, made by Themistocles a Port sufficiently capacious to hold, according to Pliny, 1000 Ships, and divided into three Docks; ATHENS; SALAMIS, governed by the descendants of Æacus, the kingdom of Ajax, now called Colouri; MEGARA, whose inhabitants rendered themselves famous by disputing with the Athenians the sovereignty of the island of Salamis, and also by the victory obtained by them over part of the Persian army commanded by Mardonius; ELEUSIS, famous for its antiquity, and the celebrated temple of Ceres; CAPE COLONNA, or the promontory of Sunium, its most ancient name was Patroclea, from Patroclus, Admiral of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt; ZEA, anciently Ceos, the birth-place of the poet Simonides, and of Erasistratus, a physician of note; THERMIA, originally Cythurs, changed to the former appellation, on account of its hot baths, the birth-place of the celebrated painter Cydias, for whose painting of the Argonautic Expedition, Hortensius, the Roman orator, gave 164 talents; SYROS, now Syra, the birth-place of the master of Pythagoras; TINE, an island famous for a temple of Neptune, its tutelar deity, whence medals of this god on the reverse, with the trident, have the inscription T. H.;-MYCONE; DELOS, the reputed birth-place of Apollo, and Diana,-whenever the ancients passed this island, they either stopped at the temple of Apollo to offer their sacrifices for a prosperous voyage, or else made libations to the same purpose from their SHIPS; NAXOS, the chief island. of the Cyclades; SCYROS, the retreat of Achilles before the Trojan war, and the island where Theseus died; LEMNOS, still called by that name by the modern Greeks, and Turks, which the trading nations have changed to Stalimene; MARDI MARMOR A, anciently the Propontis, as being the sea before the Pontus Euxinus; CONSTANTINOPLE, anciently called Byzantium, from Byzas, admiral of the Megarean fleet. Lord Sandwich enters at large into the history of Constantinople, the customs and government of the Turks, and gives a clear relation of the revolution, which happened at Constantinople in the year 1730;-this alone takes up sixty pages of the volume. On leaving Constantinople, his Lordship re-embarked on board THE ANNE GALLEY, and continued his voyage over the rest of the Levant, sailing by Troy, Smyrna, Samos, and Rhodes, towards Egypt; which country, at present so much considered, his Lordship made the object of his particular attention: his observations relative to it, extending to eighty-five pages, accompanied with eight engravings of the Pyramids. On returning home, his Lordship gives an account of, and visits, among other places, Maltha, Lisbon, Minorca, and Genoa. The account of the celebrated capital of Sicily will give our readers an idea of his Lordship's style: About twelve leagues distant from Mount Gibel stands the celebrated city of Siracusa, the ancient capital of this island, which, in the time of its prosperity, yielded in grandeur and magnificence to no city whatever. It was built by a colony of Corinthians, (as I have already mentioned,) four hundred years after the siege of Troy, from whence the Siracuse woman, in Theocritus, says, Κορίνθιοι ειμες ἄνωθεν Ως καὶ ὁ Βελλεροφων . Idyl. xv. 91. It was formerly reckoned nine miles in circumference, but is now dwindled away to what was (when Marcellus besieged it) the citadel, and is at present in as low a condition as it was then flourishing. The harbour is one of the finest in the world, purely the work of nature, and is surrounded by one of the most pleasant and fertile countries that, I think, I ever saw; whence it was very properly "Besides, we're of Corinthian mould, placed under the protection of Ceres. The ancient magnificence of this famous city is very pompously described by Silvius Italicus*. It may be imagined that our curiosity was heightened by the discovery of several ruins at a small distance from the sea-shore. The first piece of antiquity, that presented itself to our view, was the remains of an amphitheatre, very much out of repair, and what had never been of any large dimensions. At a small distance hence is what the people of the country imagine to have been the senatehouse; though I rather take it to be a theatre, it being exactly of the shape of those I have seen elsewhere, and the seats cut out in the rock one above another, according to the fashion of all the theatres I have ever met with. It is not impossible but that it may be the same, which is mentioned in the above quoted passage of Sil. Ital. Hence we went directly to the Ear of Dionysius, which it would be difficult to say too much in praise of, or to give an idea sufficient to make a person comprehend the curiosity of this valuable piece of antiquity. It is at this instant as entire as when it was first made, and still retains that surprising power of reverberation of sounds. It is frequently made mention of in Cicero's Orat. in Verr. by the denomination of Latamiæ Syracusana; and likewise in Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam. It is a large cavern cut horizontally into a rock, 72 feet high, 27 broad, and 219 in depth: the entrance is of the shape of an ass's ear, and the inside somewhat of the form of the letter S. On the top of the cave there is a groove which runs from one end to the other, and has communication with a small room at the entrance, now inaccessible, by reason of the height and steepness of the rock: this is imagined to have been a guard room, where the tyrant used to place a sentinel, who, by hearing every the least whisper of the prisoners within, made his report accordingly to his masters. We fired a pistol in it, which made a noise like thunder. When one of us went to the end, and there fetched his breath, he was heard very distinctly by those without; and unfolding a letter as gently as possible, it seemed as if somebody had flapped a sheet of paper close to your ear: indeed the effects of the reverberation are so surprising, that people would be apt to think that those, who related them, were giving into a vice, of which all travellers are generally suspected guilty. There is now standing in the town a temple of Minerva, of the Doric order, which is made use of as the cathedral church; and about three miles out of the town the remains of one dedicated to Diana, of the same rank and order as the other. They are neither of them any otherwise remarkable than for their antiquity, being of but ordinary workmanship, and appearing to have been Book xiv. 641. |
