Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847

Thirlwall, vol. i. p. 154. On the subject of the Trojan war we quote the following passage from the same historian, as an instance of the extremely slender thread which a conjectural writer will think it worth his while to weave in amongst his arguments for the support of some dubious fact. "One inevitable result," he says, "of such an event as the Trojan war, must have been to diffuse amongst the Greeks a more general knowledge of the isles and coasts of the Ægean, and to leave a lively recollection of the beauty and fertility of the region in which their battles had been fought. This would direct the attention of future emigrants in search of new homes toward the same quarter; and the fact that the tide of migration really set in this direction first, when the state of Greece became unsettled, may not unreasonably be thought to confirm the reality of the Trojan war." (P. 250.) Little need, one would think, of a Trojan war to direct the tide of emigration to the opposite coasts of Asia Minor.

7

Edinburgh New Philosophic Journal, 1831, p. 165.

8

New Statistical Account of Scotland—Banffshire, p. 298.

9

Dr Skene Keith's Surrey of Aberdeenshire, p. 644.

10

History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena. By General Count Montholon Vols. iii. and iv. London: H. Colburn.

11

Sombra por la tarde,—"shade for the afternoon." The tickets for the bull-fight vary in value according as they are for the sunny or shady side of the arena.

12

Places of bad fame in the respective towns, frequented by thieves and suspicious characters.

13

"Half-past eleven, and a fine night."

14

The stable where the bulls are kept.

15

The Rubicon, which is a small torrent, a little north of Rimini (Ariminum), flowing into the Hadriatic, was, at the time of Cæsar's famous passage, swollen to a considerable stream by three days' rain.—Lucan, i. 213-19.

16

"'Hic,' ait—'hic pacem temerataque jura relinquo.

Te, Fortuna, sequor, procul hinc jam foedera sunto;

Credidunus Fatis, uterdum est judice bello.'"—Lucan, i. 227.

17

Cæsar met with no opposition in his march to Rome except from Domitius Ænobarbus, who was stationed at Corfinium, amid the Apennines, east of the Eucine lake. The line of march which Cæsar took, through Picenum, was, as Gibbon has remarked, calculated at once to clear his rear of the Pompeian party, and to frighten Pompey himself, not only out of Rome, but, as actually happened, out of Italy.

18

Pompey fled to Capua, passing the marshes of Minturnæ at the mouth of the Liris (now the Garigliano), and from thence over the Apennines, by the Via Appia, to Brundusium in the ancient Calabria.

19

An allusion to the battle of Cynoscephalæ, which subjected Macedonia to the Romans (b. c. 197.) The scene of this battle was on the same plain of Thessaly through which the Enipeus flows into the Peneus, passing by Pharsalus in its course. This alludes to the battle of Dyrrachium, where Pompey was successful for a moment, only to revive in his party that vain confidence and shallow conceit which was their original ruin.

20

Labienus, Cæsar's lieutenant in the Gallic war; but who afterwards joined Pompey. He gave his new master bad advice.—Bellum Civile, iii.

21

See the order of battle of both parties.—Bellum Civile, iii. 68, 69.

22

The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D. Edited by Sir William Hamilton, Bart., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh; with Copious Notes and Supplementary Dissertations by the Editor. Edinburgh: Maclachlan, Stewart, & Co. 1846.

23

Among the first. He was not the first. Berkeley had preceded him in denouncing most unequivocally the whole theory of representationism. The reason why Berkeley does not get the credit of this is, because his performance is even more explicit and cogent than his promise. He made no phrase about refuting the theory—he simply refuted it. Reid said the business—but Berkeley did it. The two greatest and most unaccountable blunders in the whole history of philosophy are, probably Reid's allegations that Berkeley was a representationist, and that he was an idealist; understanding by the word idealist, one who denies the existence of a real external universe. From every page of his writings, it is obvious that Berkeley was neither the one of these nor the other, even in the remotest degree.

24

They err.—This, however, can scarcely be called an error. It is the business of the sceptic at least to accept the principles generally recognised, and to develop their conclusions, however absurd or revolting. If the principles are false to begin with, that is no fault of his, but of those at whose hands he received them.

25

Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. Part I. ch. i.