year, he died of apoplexy, in the 61st year of his age. Besides his travels, he was the author of several memoirs in the Philosophical Transactions, and in the Archæologia; and there still remain a number of his smaller pieces in manuscript at the British Museum. No popular or well-conceived edition of his works has hitherto been published, though few travellers are deserving of more credit, or were more competent to describe the countries through which they journeyed.
JOHN BELL.
Born 1690.—Died about 1780.
Bell seems to have been born about the year
1690, at Antermony, in Scotland. He was possessed,
even from his earliest years, by a strong passion for
travel; but his passion, together with a large portion
of shrewdness and sagacity, constituting the
better part of his inheritance, he judiciously applied
himself to the study of medicine and surgery, a
knowledge of which, in all semi-barbarous countries,
is frequently of more avail to the traveller even than
wealth. It does not appear whether Bell was directed
in the choice of his scene by preference or
by chance. However, as all Europe was at that
period filled with admiration of the projects of Peter
the First, whose reputation for munificence drew
crowds of adventurers by a species of magnetic
attraction towards the north, it is probable that a
desire of personal aggrandizement united with a
thirst of knowledge in urging our traveller in the
direction of Petersburg. But be this as it may,
having obtained from several respectable persons
recommendatory letters to Dr. Areskine, chief phy-
