solemnly averred, fell far short of the truth. The persecution of Marco Polo, however, arose wholly from the ignorance of his contemporaries; but Bruce had a foible, abundantly visible in his writings, from which the great Italian traveller was altogether exempt—I mean an arrogant and intolerable vanity. Even the most charitable of readers must frequently, in perusing Bruce's writings, be angered, if not disgusted, at its perpetual recurrence in the coarsest and most undisguised forms; but when we reflect, that notwithstanding this foible, or partly, perhaps, in consequence of it, he was one of the most enterprising, adventurous, and indefatigable of travellers, we readily consent to overlook this defect in consideration of the many excellences which accompany it. As a writer he is slovenly and immethodical, and destitute to a remarkable degree of the graces of style; but, on the other hand, he is always so much in earnest, and so natural, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, that it would argue nothing short of actual stupidity to doubt of the truth of what he relates.
JONAS HANWAY.
Born 1712.—Died 1786.
Jonas Hanway, equally celebrated as a traveller
and a philanthropist, was born on the 12th of August,
1712, at Portsmouth, in Hampshire. His father
dying while he was yet a child, he was removed
with the other members of the family to London,
where he received an education suited to the course
of life he was intended to pursue, and at the age of
seventeen was placed as an apprentice in a mercantile
house at Lisbon. Here Hanway conceived a
