e box of his
books. It is evident that a great number of volumes might be comprised
in this way within a small space; and this may tend to explain the
smallness of the ancient libraries--at least of the rooms which are
considered to have been such. Beside the box are two tablets, which,
from the money-bag and coins scattered about, had probably been used
in reckoning accounts.

No perfect papyri, but only fragments, have been found at Pompeii. At
Herculaneum, up to the year 1825, 1,756 had been obtained, besides
many others destroyed by the workmen, who imagined them to be mere
sticks of charcoal. Most of them were found in a suburban villa, in a
room of small dimensions, ranged in presses round the sides of the
room, in the centre of which stood a sort of rectangular book-case.

Sir Humphry Davy, after investigating their chemical nature, arrived
at the conclusion that they had not been carbonized by heat, but
changed by the long action of air and moisture; and he visited Naples
in hopes of rendering the resources of chemistry available towards
deciphering these long-lost literary treasures. His expectations,
however, were not fully crowned with success, although the partial
efficacy of his methods was established; and he relinquished the
pursuit at the end of six months, partly from disappointment, partly
from a belief that vexatious obstacles were thrown in his way by the
jealousy of the persons to whom the task of unrolling had been
intrusted. About five hundred volumes have been well and neatly
unrolled. It is rather remarkable that, as far as we are acquainted,
no manuscript of any known standard work has been found, nor, indeed,
any production of any of the great luminaries of the ancient world.

The most celebrated person, of whom any work has been found, is
Epicurus, whose treatise, _De Natura_, has been successfully unrolled.
This and a few other treatises have been published. The library in
which this was found appears to have been rich in treatises on the
Epicurean philosophy. The only Latin work which it contained was a
poem, attributed to Rabirius, on the war of Caesar and Antony.

A curious literary monument has been found in the shape of a
calendar. It is cut on a square block of marble, upon each side of
which three months are registered in perpendicular columns, each
headed by the proper sign of the zodiac. The information given may be
classed under three heads, astronomical, agricultural, and reli