DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0110
84 TRAVELS IN UPPER
as the seas of the Levant, and thus appropriated
to herself the commerce of it; while, by her inti-
mate alliances with the nations who can no loneer
have an interest separate from hers, she has accom-
plished the great work of social order, the fraterni-
zation of mankind *.
Before the island of Malta became the domain
of the Brotherhood of St. John of Jerusalem, it
had passed successively into the hands of several
potentates. From the Carthaginians down to the
Arabs it underwent a frequent change of masters ;
the vestiges of antiquity in it are accordingly not
few. There was printed at Malta itself, in 1794,
a work in Italian, on the subject of those ancient
remains, produced from researches made by
digging up the ground in 1788 -f*.
If certain persons are to be believed, the Maltese
language is still more ancient than most of the
ruins discovered there, though it has long passed
for an uncouth mixture of Arabic and Italian. A
learned gentleman of Malta, Antonio Vassali, has
* This, translated into the language of truth, means unlimited
subjection to the tyrannical rule of, they say, thirty millions of
despots.—H. H.
f Degli Apanzi di alchuni antichissimi Edifici, scoperti in Mal-
ta ; Dissertatione storica-critica del March. Barbaro Archit. con
copiose Annotazione del medezimo Autore, 1794, in 4*0. fig.
lately
as the seas of the Levant, and thus appropriated
to herself the commerce of it; while, by her inti-
mate alliances with the nations who can no loneer
have an interest separate from hers, she has accom-
plished the great work of social order, the fraterni-
zation of mankind *.
Before the island of Malta became the domain
of the Brotherhood of St. John of Jerusalem, it
had passed successively into the hands of several
potentates. From the Carthaginians down to the
Arabs it underwent a frequent change of masters ;
the vestiges of antiquity in it are accordingly not
few. There was printed at Malta itself, in 1794,
a work in Italian, on the subject of those ancient
remains, produced from researches made by
digging up the ground in 1788 -f*.
If certain persons are to be believed, the Maltese
language is still more ancient than most of the
ruins discovered there, though it has long passed
for an uncouth mixture of Arabic and Italian. A
learned gentleman of Malta, Antonio Vassali, has
* This, translated into the language of truth, means unlimited
subjection to the tyrannical rule of, they say, thirty millions of
despots.—H. H.
f Degli Apanzi di alchuni antichissimi Edifici, scoperti in Mal-
ta ; Dissertatione storica-critica del March. Barbaro Archit. con
copiose Annotazione del medezimo Autore, 1794, in 4*0. fig.
lately