edge of this ancient people, who, according to Bailly, had
instructed the Indians. To answer this difficulty, the celebrated
astronomer undertakes to prove that some nations have disappeared,
without their existence being known to us by any thing beyond tradition.
He cites five of these, and in the first rank the Atlantidae.

Aristotle said that he thought Atlantis was a fiction of Plato's: "He
who created it also destroyed it, like the walls that Homer built on the
shores of Troy, and then made them disappear." Bailly does not join in
this skepticism. According to him, Plato spoke seriously to the
Athenians of a learned, polished people, but destroyed and forgotten.
Only, he totally repudiates the idea of the Canaries being the remains
of the ancient country of the Atlantidae, and now engulfed. Bailly rather
places that nation at Spitzbergen, Greenland, or Nova Zembla, whose
climate may have changed. We should also have to seek for the Garden of
the Hesperides near the Pole; in short, the fable of the Phoenix may
have arisen in the Gulf of the Obi, in a region where we must suppose
the sun to have been annually absent during sixty-five days.

It is evident, in many passages, that Bailly is himself surprised at the
singularity of his own conclusions, and fears that his readers may
rather regard them as jokes. He therefore exclaims, "My pen would not
find expressions for thoughts which I did not believe to be true." Let
us add that no effort is painful to him. Bailly calls successively to
his aid astronomy, history, supported by vast erudition, philology, the
systems of Mairan, of Buffon, relatively to the heat appertaining to the
earth. He does not forget, using his own words, "that in the human
species, still more sensitive than curious, more anxious for pleasure
than for instruction, nothing pleases generally, or for a long time,
unless the style is agreeable; that dry truth is killed by ennui!" Yet
Bailly makes few proselytes; and a species of instinct determines men of
science to despise the fruits of so persevering a labour; and D'Alembert
goes so far as to tax them with poverty, even with hollow ideas, with
vain and ridiculous efforts; he goes so far as to call Bailly,
relatively to his letters, the _illuminated brother_. Voltaire is, on
the contrary, very polite and very academical in his communications with
our author. The renown of the Brahmins is dear to him; yet this does
not prevent his discussing closely th