me period with the earth."

In the next, he answers two geographical questions; one concerning
Troas, mentioned in the acts and epistles of St. Paul, which he
determines to be the city built near the ancient Ilium; and the other
concerning the Dead sea, of which he gives the same account with other
writers.

Another letter treats of the Answers of the Oracle of Apollo, at
Delphos, to Croesus, king of Lydia. In this tract nothing deserves
notice, more than that Browne considers the oracles as evidently and
indubitably supernatural, and founds all his disquisition upon that
postulate. He wonders why the physiologists of old, having such means
of instruction, did not inquire into the secrets of nature: but
judiciously concludes, that such questions would probably have been
vain; "for in matters cognoscible, and formed for our disquisition,
our industry must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo."

The pieces that remain are, a Prophecy concerning the future State of
several Nations; in which Browne plainly discovers his expectation to
be the same with that entertained lately, with more confidence, by Dr.
Berkeley, "that America will be the seat of the fifth empire;" and,
Museum clausum, sive Bibliotheca abscondita: in which the author
amuses himself with imagining the existence of books and curiosities,
either never in being or irrecoverably lost.

These pieces I have recounted, as they are ranged in Tenison's
collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at
which any of them were written.

Some of them are of little value, more than as they gratify the mind
with the picture of a great scholar, turning his learning into
amusement; or show upon how great a variety of inquiries, the same
mind has been successfully employed.

The other collection of his posthumous pieces, published in octavo,
London, 1722, contains Repertorium; or some account of the Tombs and
Monuments in the Cathedral of Norwich; where, as Tenison observes,
there is not matter proportionate to the skill of the antiquary.

The other pieces are, Answers to sir William Dugdale's Inquiries about
the Fens; a letter concerning Ireland; another relating to urns newly
discovered; some short strictures on different subjects; and a Letter
to a Friend on the Death of his intimate Friend, published singly by
the author's son, in 1690.

There is inserted in the Biographia Britannica, a Letter containing
Instructions for the Study of Physick: w