ATALANTIS, or ATLANTICA, an island mentioned by Plato, and some others of the ancients, concerning the real existence of which many disputes have been raised. Homer, Horace, and the other poets, make two Atlantica's, calling them Hesperides, and Elysian fields, making them the habitations of the blest. The most distinct account of this island we have in Plato's Timaeus, of which Mr Chambers gives the following abridgment. "The Atlantis was a large island in the western ocean, situated before or opposite to the straits of Gades. Out of this island there was an easy passage into some others, which lay near a large continent exceeding in bigness all Europe and Asia. Neptune settled in this island (from whose son Atlas its name was derived), and divided it among his ten sons. To the youngest fell the extremity of the island called Gadis, which, in the language of the country, signifies fertile, or abundant in sheep. The descendants of Neptune reigned here from father to son for a great number of generations in the order of primogeniture, during the space of 9000 years. They also possessed several other islands; and, passing into Europe and Africa, subdued all Libya as far as Egypt, and all Europe to Asia Minor. At length the island sunk under water; and for a long time afterwards the sea thereabouts was full of rocks and shelves."

Many of the moderns, also, are of opinion that the existence of the Atlantis is not to be looked upon as entirely fabulous. Some take it to have been America; and from thence, as well as from a passage in Seneca's Medea, and some other obscure hints*, they imagine that the new world was not unknown to the ancients. But allowing this to be the case, the above-mentioned continent which was said to lie beyond Atlantis would seem rather to have been the continent of America than Atlantis itself. The learned Rudbeck, professor in the university of Upsal, in a work entitled Atlantis sine Manheim, endeavours to prove that Sweden and Norway are the Atlantis of the ancients; but this its situation will by no means allow us to believe. By Kircher it is supposed to have been an island extending from the Canaries quite to the Azores; that it was really swallowed up by the ocean as Plato affirms; and that these small islands are the shattered remains of it which were left standing.