An

568 INDEX EXPURGATORIUS.

85. Angora is famous for the long, beautiful, and silky hair of several sorts of animals, and particularly'of its goats. M. de Buffon, as the general historian of all those animals, has often occasion to speak of so curious a distinction; but he as constantly supposes Angora to be a city of Syria, and even deduces consequences after his method, from the happy climate of that country, so congenial to those animals. (V. Histoire Naturelle aux Articles de la Chévre, du Chat, et du Lapin, tom. v. et vi.) This supposed Syrian city is, however, in reality one of the most considerable towns of Asia Minor, which at present contains 100,000 souls, and is the seat of a Turkish pasha, and which was formerly, under the name of Ancyra, the capital of the province of Galatia. This breed of goats is even confined to about thirty miles round Ancyra, and easily degenerates when carried to any distance. (V. Pococke’s Description of the East, vol. ii. p. ii, p. 86—90.) M. de Buffon was not betrayed into this error by any preconceived system. On the contrary, the latitude of Spain agrees still more strictly with Asia Minor than with Syria.

86. M. de Voltaire (V. le Corneille de Voltaire, tom. ix. p. 153.) praises Racine and Corneille for having, both of them, very judiciously avoided shewing the contempt which the Romans and indeed all mankind entertained for the Jewish nation. Berenice was the heroine of their tragedy, and the reader might possibly have thought too much. like a Roman. Voltaire might have added, that those poets were equally in the right in representing her as a young princess, although at the time of her separation from Titus she was above fifty. Historymust receive and can only explain the most improbable facts when they are properly averred. Poetry ought always to prefer agreeable probabilities to harsh and unlikely truths. The proof of Berenice’s age is clear and easy. Her father Agrippa died A. C. 44. She was then. sixteen, and already married to her uncle Herod, King of Chalcis. Titus succeeded his father Vespasian in the year 79, 35 years after the death of Agrippa. (V. Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs, tom. i. p. 839, de l’édit. in 12mo. et toutes les autorités qu’il cite.)

Weegee