In the notes to Saxo (p. 197.) there is a long extract about Wollinum, from Chytraeus, a writer who lived 1530-1600, taken from the information of a learned old man whose uncle was born there.  He says he went there to see, accompanied by many of the principal inhabitants, the remains of Julin, destroyed in 1170 by Waldemar.  Wollin he calls “mediocris civitas.”  From the ruins, it had been more than a German mile round.  Part of it was “ineditiore paulum colle.”  He speaks of four montes, which had castles.  He says Wollin is “non aspernenda civitas,” but not a thirtieth part of the ancient size.

C.B.

I regret that my questioner V., from Belgravia (Vol. ii., p. 379.), should have felt aggrieved that, upon his request for my story, I should have been compelled to reply, in the words of the Ancient Mariner: 

  “Story! bless you, sir, I have none to tell.”

As he seems, however, so assured that some account of the destruction of a city of such opulence and renown as Vineta must exist, I shall be extremely happy to learn it from him.  I can assure my friend V. that neither Kanzow nor Microelius (who has, however, a plan of the stone pavement of its streets at the bottom of the Baltic), nor Giesebrecht, in his Wendische Geschichten (Berlin, 1844, 3 vols. 8 vo.), know anything beyond what I have stated.  And as to a great port disappearing in the ocean, without any cotemporary notice, the instances are frequent; as remarkable a one as any occurs in our own island, and at a much later period:—­Ravenspur, which was a sea-port of the greatest importance, where certainly Henry IV., and, as some say, Henry VII., landed from the opposite continent, to claim and conquer their crowns, and where the father of De la Pole, {444} Duke of Suffolk, was a merchant, is now so totally lost from memory and the earth, that its very site is unknown, whether within the Humber, or outside the Spurn; possibly where now the reef called Stony Binks at the mouth of that aestuary is situated.

So far, however, as an actual legend is concerned with the destruction of a great emporium of commerce, I am happy I can supply your correspondent with one, possibly the more acceptable as it is of another famous city, not very remote from Vineta, and is not without relations belonging to the latter:  I allude to the town of Wisby, Visbuy, Visbye, Visburgum, on the island of Gothland, of which the following account is found in an old Latin description of Sweden: 

“Insulae unica civitas, olim potentia splendore et magnitudine celebris, tantarum rerum jactura fracta in exiguos fines se contraxit et oppiduli speciem refert, ut Jansonii Atlas docet.  Arx prope portum satis valida.  Emporiis illis Pomeraniae clarissimis Wineta et Julin pessum euntibus, Visbya inter omnia Regionum oppida floruit. (Olaus Magnus, l. 10. cap. 16.) Licet urbs vetustissima Visbycensis potentissima ac opulentissima quondam