Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

indefatigable Champollion,-the monuments of all sorts which have been imported into England,the great collection of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, and the magnificent descriptions which travellers of all nations have given of the majestic and wonderful ruins existing throughout Nubia and Egypt, have excited so much general interest in favour of hieroglyphics and Egyptian antiquities, that every thing connected with the existence and past grandeur of that extraordinary people is become an object of national curiosity.

One observation, however, the Author feels himself called upon to make, though it is not an observation for him to make, if he could well avoid it; and it is this:-that, unable to express himself as he might have hoped to do in his own language, he has had no resource but to assemble the greatest quantity of literary facts, and literary notices, which the limits of his Lectures allowed; being conscious that as he could derive no advantage from his manner, he had to depend only on his matter; and as he had no hope to please by the beauty of composition, his efforts have been always directed to give information, if he could,

and information only. And though these Lectures have been written with the view of suiting the taste of the general reader, yet he is not without a hope that they may occasionally offer to the scholar and to the antiquary materials sufficiently interesting to engage their attention.

CAMBRIDGE,

June 1st, 1829.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »