tion, like to have my house tumbled about my ears.)
But though it was impossible in the theatre of Herculaneum to gain
any idea of its size or richness, I remembered there the magnificent
bronzes which had been found in it, and did a hasty reverence to
the place. Indeed, it is amazing, when one sees how small a part of
Herculaneum has been uncovered, to consider the number of fine works
of art in the Museo Borbonico which were taken thence, and which argue
a much richer and more refined community than that of Pompeii. A third
of the latter city has now been restored to the light of day; but
though it has yielded abundance of all the things that illustrate the
domestic and public life, and the luxury and depravity of those old
times, and has given the once secret rooms of the museum their worst
attraction, it still falls far below Herculaneum in the value of its
contributions to the treasures of classic art, except only in the
variety and beauty of its exquisite frescos.

The effect of this fact is to stimulate the imagination of the visitor
to that degree that nothing short of the instant destruction of
Portici and the excavation of all Herculaneum will satisfy him. If the
opening of one theatre, and the uncovering of a basilica and two
or three houses, have given such richness to us, what delight and
knowledge would not the removal of these obdurate hills of ashes and
lava bestow!

Emerging from the coal-bins and potato-cellars, the visitor
extinguishes his candle with a pathetic sigh, profusely rewards the
custodian (whom he connects in some mysterious way with the ancient
population of the injured city about him), and, thoughtfully removing
the tallow from his fingers, follows the course of the vile stream
already sung, and soon arrives at the gate opening into the exhumed
quarter of Herculaneum. And there he finds a custodian who enters
perfectly into his feelings; a custodian who has once been a guide in
Pompeii, but now despises that wretched town, and would not be
guide there for any money since he has known the superior life of
Herculaneum; who, in fine, feels toward Pompeii as a Bostonian feels
toward New York. Yet the reader would be wrong to form the idea that
there is bitterness in the disdain of this custodian. On the contrary,
he is one of the best-natured men in the world. He is a mighty mass of
pinguid bronze, with a fat lisp, and a broad, sunflower smile, and
he lectures us with a vast and genial brea