eatre. Everything is fragmentary, mutilated, dingy,
uncertain, confused, and therefore unsatisfactory. Well, at the end of an
hour spent in wandering amongst these abysmal recesses, the most hardened
archaeologist, the most dry-as-dust antiquary, the most inquisitive of
tourists begins to experience only one feeling--an intense desire to ascend
to the light of day and to breathe once more the fresh air of the upper
world."

Nevertheless, it was from these dismal caverns, black as Erebus, that some
of the choicest marbles and bronzes that now adorn the Museum at Naples
were originally extracted. From a villa at Herculaneum also was taken the
famous collection of 3000 rolls of papyrus, chiefly filled with the
writings of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, perhaps the greatest
"find" of ancient literature that has yet been made, although the contents
of this damaged library, deciphered with equal toil and ingenuity, have
not proved to be of the value originally set upon them by expectant
scholars. But much of the city itself has yet hardly been touched since
the days when it was destroyed in the reign of Titus, so that far below
the squalid lanes of Portici and Resina there must still exist acres upon
acres of undisturbed buildings, public and private, many of them perhaps
filled with priceless works of Greek and Roman art, for Herculaneum,
unlike Pompeii, was never tampered with by the ancients themselves, for
the coating of volcanic mud, which filled the whole area of the city, made
impracticable a systematic searching of its ruins by the despoiled
citizens. Then, as if nature had not already buried the city sufficiently
deep, subsequent eruptions of Vesuvius have superimposed additional layers
of lava, whilst confiding human beings have in their turn built
habitations upon the volcanic crust.

We all know the story, perhaps mythical, of the discovery of Herculaneum
at the beginning of the eighteenth century by the accidental sinking of a
well upon its long-forgotten site and of the subsequent excavations made
by the Prince d'Elboeuf. These so-called explorations were, however, made
in the most greedy and destructive spirit, for the prince's sole object
was to obtain antique works of art for his private collection, not to make
intelligent enquiries about the dead and buried city lying beneath his
estate. Ignorant workmen were despatched to hew and hack wholesale in the
mirky depths in order to discover statuary an