LITERARY COINCIDENCES
is as follows :— Volney, in his Ruins of Empires, written about 1784,
Chapter 2, says :-
" Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself trill sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder sea, where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensation ; who knows but he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people inurned, and their greatness changed into an empty name ? "
And Macaulay, in his essay on Ranke's History of the Popes, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church (October, 1840), says :-
" And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."
It is more than probable that Macaulay, who was an omnivorous reader, had read Volney's Ruins, hence the idea, although one would not for a moment suggest plagiarism.—I
am, Sir, &c., W. H. DUGDALE. Wearcourt, Roker, Sunderland.
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