of China. 50. The Romish missionaries, especially the Jesuits, Accounts spread themselves with intrepid zeal during this period over infidel nations. Things strange to European prejudice, the books, the laws, the rites, the manners, the dresses of those remote people, were related by them on their return, for the most part orally, but sometimes through the press. The vast empire of China, the Cathay of Marco Polo, over which an air of fabulous mystery had hung, and which is delineated in the old maps with much ignorance of its position and extent, now first was brought within the sphere of European knowledge. The Portuguese had some traffic to Canton; but the relations they gave were uncertain, till, in 1577, two Augustine friars persuaded a Chinese officer to take them into the country. After a residence of four months they returned to Manilla, and, in consequence of their reports, Philip II. sent, in 1580, an embassy to the court of Pekin. The History of China by Mendoza, as it is called, contains all the knowledge that the Spaniards were able to collect by these means; and it may be said, on comparison with later books on the same subject, to be as full and ample an account of China as could have been given in such circumstances. This book was published in 1585, and from that time, but no earlier, do we date our acquaintance with that empire. Maffei, in his History of India, threw all the graces of a pure Latin style over his description of the East. The first part of a scarce and curious collection of voyages to the two Indies, with the names of De Bry and Merian as its editors, appeared at Frankfort in Russia. 1590. Six other volumes were published at intervals down to 1634. Possevin, meantime, told us more of a much nearer state, Muscovy, than was before familiar to western Europe, though the first information had been due to England. India and English 51. The spirit of lucre vied with that of religion in penetrating unknown regions. In this the Engfish have most to boast; they were the first to pass the Icy Cape and anchor their ships in the White Sea. This was in the famous voyage of Chancellor discoveries in the Northern Seas. k Biogr. Univ. This was translated into English by R. Parke in 1588; at least I believe it to be the same work, but have never seen the original. in 1553. Anthony Jenkinson soon afterwards, through the heart of Russia, found his way to Bokhara and Persia. They followed up the discoveries of Cabot in North America; and, before the end of the century, had ascertained much of the coasts about Labrador and Hudson's Bay, as well as those of Virginia, the first colony. These English voyages were recorded in the three parts of the Collection of Voyages, by Hakluyt, published in 1598, 1599, and 1600. Drake, second to Magellan in that bold enterprise, traversed the circumference of the world; and the reign of Elizabeth, quite as much as any later age, bears witness to the intrepidity and skill, if not strictly to the science, of our sailors. For these undaunted navigators, traversing the unexplored wildernesses of ocean in small ill-built vessels, had neither any effectual assistance from charts, nor the means of making observations themselves, or of profiting by those of others. Hence, when we come to geographical knowledge, in the proper sense of the word, we find it surprisingly scanty, even at the close of the sixteenth century. cal books; 52. It had not, however, been neglected, so far as a multiplicity of books could prove a regard to it. Geographi Ortelius, in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, (the Ortelius. first edition of which was in 1570, augmented afterwards by several maps of later dates,) gives a list of about 150 geographical treatises, most of them subsequent to 1560. His own work is the first general atlas since the revival of letters, and has been justly reckoned to make an epoch in geography, being the basis of all collections of maps since formed, and deserving, it is said, even yet to be consulted, notwithstanding the vast progress of our knowledge of the earth. The maps in the later editions of the sixteenth century bear various dates. That of Africa is of 1590; and though the outline is tolerably given, we do not find the Mauritius Isles, while the Nile is carried almost to the Cape of Good Hope, and made to issue from a great lake. In the map of America, dated 1587, the outline on the N.E. side contains New France, with the city of Canada; the St. Lawrence traverses the country, but without lakes; Florida is sufficiently distinguished, but the intervening coast is loosely laid down. Estotiland, Biog. Univ. m the supposed discovery of the Zeni, appears to the north, and Greenland beyond. The outline of South America is worse, the southern parts covering nearly as much longitude as the northern, an error which was in some measure diminished in a map of 1603. An immense solid land, as in all the older maps, connects Terra del Fuego with New Guinea. The delineation of the southern coasts of Asia is not very bad, even in the earlier maps of Ortelius, but some improvement is perceived in his knowledge of China and the adjacent seas in that of the world, given in the edition of 1588. The maps of Europe in Ortelius are chiefly defective as to the countries on the Baltic Sea and Russia; but there is a general incorrectness of delineation which must strike the eye at once of any person slightly experienced in geography. 53. Gerard Mercator, a native of the duchy of Juliers, where he passed the greater part of his life, was perhaps superior to Ortelius. His fame is most diffused by the invention of a well-known mode of delineating hydrographical charts, in which the parallels and meridians intersect each other at right angles. The first of these was published in 1569; but the principle of the method was not understood till Edward Wright, in 1599, explained it in his Correction of Errors in Navigation." The Atlas of Mercator, in an edition of 1598, which contains only part of Europe, is superior to that of Ortelius; and as to England, of which there had been maps published by Lluyd in 1569, and by Saxton in 1580, it may be reckoned very tolerably correct. Lluyd's map, indeed, is published in the Atlas of Ortelius. But in the northern regions of Europe we still find a mass of arbitrary, erroneous conjecture. 54. Botero, the Piedmontese Jesuit mentioned in another place, has given us a cosmography, or general description of as much of the world as was then known, entitled Relazioni Universali; the edition I have seen is undated, but he mentions the discovery of Nova Zembla in 1594. His knowledge of Asia is very limited, and chiefly derived from Marco Polo. China, he says, extends from 17° to 52° of latitude, and has 22° of longitude. Japan is sixty leagues from China and 150 from America. The coasts, Botero observes, from Bengal to China are so " Montucla, ii. 651. Biogr. Univ. art. Mercator. dangerous, that two or three are lost out of every four ships, but the master who succeeds in escaping these perils is sure to make his fortune. 55. But the best map of the sixteenth century is one of uncommon rarity, which is found in a very few copies of the first edition of Hakluyt's Voyages. This contains Davis's Straits (Fretum Davis), Virginia by name, and the lake Ontario. The coast of Chili is placed more correctly than in the prior maps of Ortelius; and it is noticed in the margin that this trending of the coast less westerly than had been supposed was discovered by Drake in 1577, and confirmed by Sarmiento and Cavendish. The huge Terra Australis of the old geography is left out. Corea is represented near its place, and China with some degree of correctness; even the north coast of New Holland is partially traced. The strait of Anian, which had been presumed to divide Asia from America, has disappeared, while a marginal note states that the distance between those two continents in latitude 38° is not less than 1200 leagues. The Ultra-Indian region is inaccurate; the sea of Aral is still unknown, and little pains have been taken with central and northern Asia. But upon the whole it represents the utmost limit of geographical knowledge at the close of the sixteenth century, and far excels the maps in the edition of Ortelius at Antwerp in 1588.0° SECT. VI.-ON HISTORY. Guicciardini. 56. THE history of Italy by Guicciardini, though it is more properly a work of the first part of the century, was not published till 1564. It is well known for the solidity of the reflections, the gravity and impartiality with which it is written, and the prolixity of the narration; a fault, however, frequent and not unpardonable in historians contemporary and familiar with the events they relate. If the siege of Pisa in 1508 appeared so uninteresting a hundred years afterwards, as to be the theme of ridicule with Boccalini, it was far otherwise to the citizens of Florence soon after the time. Guicciardini has generally held the first place among Italian historians, though he is by no means equal in literary merit to Machiavel. Adriani, whose continuation of Guicciardini extends to 1574, is little read, nor does he seem to be much recommended by style. No other historian of that country need be mentioned for works published within the sixteenth century. 57. The French have ever been distinguished for those personal memoirs of men more or less conversant French memoirs. with public life, to which Philip de Comines led the way. Several that fell within this period are deserving of being read, not only for their relation of events, with which we do not here much concern ourselves, but for a lively style, and occasionally for good sense and acute thinking. Those of Montluc may be praised for the former. Spain had a considerable historian in Mariana, twenty books of whose history were published in Latin in 1592, and five more in 1595; the concluding five books do not fall within the century. The style is vigorous and classical, the thoughts judicious. Buchanan's History of Scotland has already been praised for the purity of its language. Few modern histories are more redolent of an antique air. We have nothing to boast in England; our historical works of the Elizabethan age are mere chronicles, and hardly good even as such. Nor do I know any Latin historians of Germany or the Low Countries who, as writers, deserve our attention. Universities in Italy. SECT. VII. GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE. 58. THE great Italian universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, and Pavia, seem to have lost nothing of their lustre throughout the century. New colleges, new buildings in that stately and sumptuous architecture which distinguishes this period, bore witness to a continual patronage, and a public demand for knowledge. It is true that the best days of classical literature had passed away |