st
Bourbon King of Naples, built a palace and laid out gardens in the days of
patches and powder, constructing a royal pleasaunce that was destined to
become the chief residence of the temporary supplanter of his own family,
Joachim Murat, the citizen king of Naples and brother-in-law of the great
Napoleon. Villa and gardens still remain, but monarchs have ceased to
visit Portici since the days of Bomba, and the old royal demesne has been
turned into an agricultural college. Adjoining and practically forming
part of Portici is the town of Resina, which preserves almost intact the
old classical name of Retina that it bore in the distant days when it
served as the port of Herculaneum. Here then in the mean streets of Resina
we find ourselves standing above, though certainly not upon, historic
ground, for the temples and villas, the theatres and private houses of the
famous buried city lie far below the surface trodden by our feet. To visit
Herculaneum it is necessary for us to descend some seventy to a hundred
feet into the depths of the earth, passing more than one layer of ancient
lava, for Resina and Portici themselves are but modern editions of former
towns that have been engulfed in the course of ages. If the stranger can
derive any solid satisfaction from the descent by a gloomy underground
passage and from fleeting glimpses of ancient walls and dwellings seen
through a forest of wooden baulks, which serve to support the spaces
excavated, he must indeed be an enthusiast. But most people, perhaps all
sensible people, will be content to take the undoubted interest of
Herculaneum on trust, probably agreeing (at any rate after their visit)
that the inspection of this subterranean city is not worth the candle, by
whose flickering beams alone can objects be distinguished in the
oppressive darkness. Personally we strongly hold to the expressed opinion
of Alexandre Dumas, who declared that even the most hardened antiquary
could not desire more than one hour's contemplation of this hidden mass of
shapeless wreckage. "Herculaneum," writes that genial Frenchman, "but
wearies our curiosity instead of exciting it. We descend into the
excavated city as into a mine by a species of shaft; then come corridors
beneath the earth which can only be entered by the light of tapers; and
these smoke-grimed passages allow us from time to time to obtain a
momentary glimpse of the angle of a house, the colonnade of some temple,
the steps of a th