the ground-plot of the house of Ulysses.—­of which he actually offers a plan in drawing! “showing how the description of the house of Ulysses in the Odyssey may be supposed to correspond with the foundations yet visible on the hill of Aito!”—­Oh, Foote!  Foote! why are you lost to such inviting subjects for your ludicrous pencil!—­In his account of this celebrated mansion, Mr. Gell says, one side of the court seems to have been occupied by the Thalamos, or sleeping apartments of the men, &c. &c.; and, in confirmation of this hypothesis, he refers to the 10th Odyssey, line 340.  On examining his reference, we read,

  [Greek:  Es thalamon t ienai, kai ses epibemenai eunes.]

where Ulysses records an invitation which he received from Circe to take a part of her bed.  How this illustrates the above conjecture, we are at a loss to divine:  but we suppose that some numerical error has occurred in the reference, as we have detected a trifling mistake or two of the same nature.

Mr. G. labours hard to identify the cave of Dexia near Bathi (the capital of the island), with the grotto of the Nymphs described in the 13th Odyssey.  We are disposed to grant that he has succeeded:  but we cannot here enter into the proofs by which he supports his opinion; and we can only extract one of the concluding sentences of the chapter, which appears to us candid and judicious:—­

“Whatever opinion may be formed as to the identity of the cave of Dexia with the grotto of the Nymphs, it is fair to state, that Strabo positively asserts that no such cave as that described by Homer existed in his time, and that geographer thought it better to assign a physical change, rather than ignorance in Homer, to account for a difference which he imagined to exist between the Ithaca of his time and that of the poet.  But Strabo, who was an uncommonly accurate observer with respect to countries surveyed by himself, appears to have been wretchedly misled by his informers on many occasions.

“That Strabo had never visited this country is evident, not only from his inaccurate account of it, but from his citation of Appollodorus and Scepsius, whose relations are in direct opposition to each other on the subject of Ithaca, as will be demonstrated on a future opportunity.”

We must, however, observe that “demonstration” is a strong term.—­In his description of the Leucadian Promontory (of which we have a pleasing representation in the plate), the author remarks that it is “celebrated for the leap of Sappho, and the death of Artemisia.”  From this variety in the expression, a reader would hardly conceive that both the ladies perished in the same manner:  in fact, the sentence is as proper as it would be to talk of the decapitation of Russell, and the death of Sidney.  The view from this promontory includes the island of Corfu; and the name suggests to Mr. Gell the following note, which, though rather irrelevant, is of a curious nature, and we therefore conclude our citations by transcribing it:—­