I regret that my questioner V., from Belgravia (Vol. ii., p. 379.), should
have felt aggrieved that, upon his request for my story, I should have been
compelled to reply, in the words of the Ancient Mariner:

"Story! bless you, sir, I have none to tell."

As he seems, however, so assured that some account of the destruction of a
city of such opulence and renown as Vineta _must_ exist, I shall be
extremely happy to learn it from him. I can assure my friend V. that
neither Kanzow nor Microelius (who has, however, a plan of the stone
pavement of its streets at the bottom of the Baltic), nor Giesebrecht, in
his _Wendische Geschichten_ (Berlin, 1844, 3 vols. 8 vo.), know anything
beyond what I have stated. And as to a great port disappearing in the
ocean, without any cotemporary notice, the instances are frequent; as
remarkable a one as any occurs in our own island, and at a much later
period:--Ravenspur, which was a sea-port of the greatest importance, where
certainly Henry IV., and, as some say, Henry VII., landed from the opposite
continent, to claim and conquer their crowns, and where the father of De la
Pole, {444} Duke of Suffolk, was a merchant, is now so totally lost from
memory and the earth, that its very site is unknown, whether within the
Humber, or outside the Spurn; possibly where now the reef called Stony
Binks at the mouth of that æstuary is situated.

So far, however, as an actual legend is concerned with the destruction of a
great emporium of commerce, I am happy I can supply your correspondent with
one, possibly the more acceptable as it is of another famous city, not very
remote from Vineta, and is not without relations belonging to the latter: I
allude to the town of Wisby, Visbuy, Visbye, Visburgum, on the island of
Gothland, of which the following account is found in an old Latin
description of Sweden: