disappeared
beneath vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and under a thick growth of
woodland--remark this latter circumstance--until, at length, centuries
accumulated, and with them the forgetfulness that buries all things.
Pompeii was then, so to speak, lost, and the few learned men who knew it
by name could not point out its site. When, at the close of the
sixteenth century, the architect Fontana was constructing a subterranean
canal to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell' Annunziata, the
conduit passed through Pompeii, from one end to the other, piercing the
walls, following the old streets, and coming upon sub structures and
inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the
place of the buried city. However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in by
a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient
edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the
learned, designated by the half-Latin name of _Civita_, which dim
tradition had handed down, the soil and debris that had accumulated
above Pompeii.

It was only in 1748, under the reign of Charles III, when the discovery
of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to the
antiquities thus buried, that, some vine-dressers having struck upon
some old walls with their picks and spades, and in so doing unearthed
statues, a colonel of engineers named Don Rocco Alcubierra asked
permission of the king to make excavations in the vicinity. The king
consented and placed a dozen of galley-slaves at the colonel's
disposition. Thus it was that by a lucky chance a military engineer
discovered the city that we are about to visit. Still, eight years more
had to roll away before any one suspected that it was Pompeii which they
were thus exhuming. Learned folks thought they were dealing with Stabiae.

Shall I relate the history of these underground researches, "badly
conducted, frequently abandoned, and resumed in obedience to the same
capriciousness that had led to their suspension," as they were? Such are
the words of the opinion Barthelemy expressed when writing, in 1755, to
the Count de Caylus. Winkelmann, who was present at these excavations a
few years later, sharply criticised the tardiness of the galley-slaves
to whom the work had been confided. "At this rate," he wrote, "our
descendants of the fourth generation will still have digging to do among
these ruins." The illustrious German hardly suspected that