BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF SOME OF THE AUTHORS REFERRED TO IN VOLUME I. Agatharcides, a philosopher and historian of Samos, who is generally supposed to have lived about two hundred years before Christ. Appian of Alexandria, governor and manager of the imperial revenues under Trajan, Adian, and Antoninus Pius, in Rome. He wrote a Roman history, from the earliest times to the reign of Augustus, in twenty-four books, of which only half the number have come down to us, an unequal work according to the sources from which the author drew his materials. A good edition of this work was issued 1785, in three volumes. by Schweighæuser, Leipsic, and Strassburg. Athenæus, a Greek Grammarian, born at Naucratis in Egypt, flourished in the third century of our era. He was one of the most learned men of his time-of all his works there remains only that entitled the Deiphrosophists; that is, the Sophists at Table, where he introduces a number of learned men, who converse upon various subjects, at the table of a Roman citizen, called Larensius. But all the editions we have of this work are very imperfect. There is, however, an infinite variety of facts and citations in it, which make it very interesting. Bayle (Pierre), a native of France, born in 1647. He gave early proof of an extraordinary memory, and of great mental endowments. He filled, successively, professorships at Sedan, in France, and at Rotterdam, and his life was entirely devoted to literary pursuits. He died at the age of fifty-nine years-of his several works his⚫ Historical and Critical Distionary,' is the most celebrated. He was a skeptic, but he never attacked the principles of morality. Belzoni, (Giambathista)—that is, John Baptist—was born at Padua, and educated at Rome. In 1803 he proceeded to England, when he acted the part of Apollo and Hercules, at Astley's amphitheatre. During his stay in England he is said to have acquired much knowledge of the science of hydraulics, the study of which had been his brief occupation in Rome, and which afterwards carried him to Egypt. He left England, after a residence of nine years, and took his way through Portugal, Spain, and Malta, to Egypt. There he remained from 1815 to 1819, at first as a dancer, till he acquired the favor of the Pacha, who made use of his services. He undertook and succeeded to open two of the greatest Pyramids of Egypt, and several catacombs near Thebes, as we have already had occasion to see. The drawings which he has furnished of these ancient monuments are considered to be very exact. In the year 1816 he succeeded in transporting a bust and a sarcophagus of alabaster, found in the catacombs, from Thebes to Alexandria, from whence they came to the British Museum. Belzoni's narrative of his discoveries, accompanied by a folio volume of forty-four copper plates, |