Letters on natural magic, addressed to Sir W. Scott / [Sir David Brewster].

  • David Brewster
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on natural magic, addressed to Sir W. Scott / [Sir David Brewster]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    verses, and this prodigy has been recorded in a Greek inscription on the left leg of the statue. But though this new faculty of the colossus was evi- dently the contrivance of the Egyptian priests, yet we are not entitled from this to call in question the simple and perfectly credible fact that it emitted sounds. This property, indeed, it seems to pos- sess at the present day ; for we learn *, that an English traveller. Sir A. Smith, accompanied with a numerous escort, examined the statue, and that at six o'clock in the morning he heard very dis- tinctly the sounds which had been so celebrated in antiquity. He asserts that this sound does not proceed from the statue but from the pedestal; and he expresses his belief that it arises from the im- pulse of the air upon the stones of the pedestal, which are arranged so as to produce this surprising effect. This singular description is, to a certain -extent, confirmed by the descri])tion of Strabo, who says, that he was quite certain that he heard a sound which proceeded either fro7n the base, or from the colossus, or from some one of the assistants. As there were no Egyptian priests in the escort of Sir A. Smith, we may now safely reject this last, and, for many centuries, the most probable hypothesis. The explanation suggested by Sir A. Smith had been previously given in a more specific form by M. Dussaulx, the translator of Juvenal. The statue, says he, being hollow, the heat of the sun heated the air which it contained, and this air, issuing at some crevice, produced the sounds of which the priests gave their own interpretation. Rejecting this explanation, M. Langles, in his dis- * Revue Encyclopediiue, 1821, Tom. ix. p. 592. -