for your ludicrous pencil!--In his account of this celebrated
mansion, Mr. Gell says, one side of the court seems to have been
occupied by the Thalamos, or sleeping apartments of the men, &c. &c.;
and, in confirmation of this hypothesis, he refers to the 10th
Odyssey, line 340. On examining his reference, we read,

[Greek: Es thalamon t ienai, kai sês epibêmenai eunês.]

where Ulysses records an invitation which he received from Circe to
take a part of her bed. How this illustrates the above conjecture, we
are at a loss to divine: but we suppose that some numerical error has
occurred in the reference, as we have detected a trifling mistake or
two of the same nature.

Mr. G. labours hard to identify the cave of Dexia near Bathi (the
capital of the island), with the grotto of the Nymphs described in
the 13th Odyssey. We are disposed to grant that he has succeeded: but
we cannot here enter into the proofs by which he supports his
opinion; and we can only extract one of the concluding sentences of
the chapter, which appears to us candid and judicious:--

"Whatever opinion may be formed as to the identity of the cave
of Dexia with the grotto of the Nymphs, it is fair to state,
that Strabo positively asserts that no such cave as that
described by Homer existed in his time, and that geographer
thought it better to assign a physical change, rather than
ignorance in Homer, to account for a difference which he
imagined to exist between the Ithaca of his time and that of
the poet. But Strabo, who was an uncommonly accurate observer
with respect to countries surveyed by himself, appears to have