HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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going, frequently occur to perplex the mind, without having experienced theaid of an ingenious commentator to elucidate them, or it being possible,perhaps, for the keenest and most assiduous modern critic to collect materialssufficient for the purpose.

It appears from the remarks made on this expedition, that although the artof ship-building had not assumed to itself a perfectly regular system, thegreater part of those excrescences and extravagant attempts made by differentnations, particularly the Romans, to astonish the rest of the world with themagnitude and supposed grandeur of an enormous floating fabric, unwieldyand incapable of being rendered serviceable in naval engagements, had totallysubsided. Experience had proved the futility, and frivolity of the attempt, ifthe diminutive term be allowed, in an object of such magnitude, and reasonseemed to have at length discovered the proper standard of use and conve-nience. The dimensions of the transport vessels were for the greater partsuch as might be used, without any impropriety whatever, even at the presentday, and the allowance of tonnage is as well proportioned as perhaps the mostscientific modern officer would have wished. There is nothing repugnant to anunqualified credit throughout the whole of the statement collected by Mr. Gib-bon. Even in the vessels of war, for such they are to be considered, which wereequipped to protect the rest of the fleet, may be discovered the parent, or firststock, from whence the galley in more recent use has been produced, withouthaving undergone any material change or alteration in its several descents.

The fleet of the Vandals, or at least the greater part of it, was at that timeabsent. It amounted to one hundred and twenty gallies, which had beenemployed under Zano, the brother to Gelimer, who was their unfortunatesovereign, in the recovery and conquest of the fruitful island of Sardinia,which had been originally subdued by Genseric, and afterwards restored to thedominion of the Romans by the sword of Marcellinus. On the first intelli-gence of his brother’s discomfiture, Zano embarked all his troops, which aresaid to have amounted to forty thousand men, and hastened, with all possibleexpedition, to the coast of Afric. These vessels, each of which must havebeen capable of conveying nearly three hundred and fifty soldiers on an average,exclusive of their own proper crews, and the necessary warlike stores, as wellas military engines, must have been considerably superior in dimensions tothose which composed the naval armament under Belisarius: but a second landconflict proving equally as unfortunate to the hopes and throne of Gelimer as

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