izens of London
saunter to Primrose hill. It was a beggarly little place from the
beginning; and the true wonder is, how it could ever have found
inhabitants, or how the inhabitants could ever have found room to eat,
drink, and sleep in. But Herculaneum is of a higher rank. If the
Neapolitan Government had any spirit, it would demolish the miserable
villages above it, and lay open this fine old monument of the cleverest,
though the most corrupt people of the earth, to the light of day. In all
probability we should learn from it more of the real state of the arts,
the manners, and the feelings of the Greek, partially modified by his
Italian colonization, than by any other record or memorial in existence.
In those vaults which still remain closed, owing to the indolence or
stupidity of the existing generation, eaten up as it is by monkery, and
spending more upon a _fete_ to the Madonna, or the liquifying of St
Januarius's blood, than would lay open half the city, there is every
probability that some of the most important literature of antiquity
still lies buried. Why will not some English company, tired of railroad
speculations and American stock, turn its discharge on Herculaneum, pour
its gold over the ground, exfoliate the city of the dead, recover its
statues, bronzes, frescoes, and mosaics, transplant them to Tower
Stairs, and sell them by the hands of George Robins, for the benefit of
the rising generation? This seems their only chance of revisiting the
light of day; for the money of all foreign sovereigns goes in fetes and
fireworks, new patterns of soldiers' caps, and new costumes for the
maids of honour.

We have now glanced over the general features of these volumes. They are
light and lively, and do credit to the writer's powers of observation.
The result of his details, however, is to impress on our minds, that the
"overland passage" is not yet fit for any female who is not inclined to
"rough it" in an extraordinary degree. To any woman it offers great
hardships; but to a woman of delicacy, the whole must be singularly
repulsive. Something is said of the decorations of the work proceeding
from the pencil of the lady's husband. Whether the lithographer has done
injustice to them, we know not; but they seem to us the very reverse of
decoration. The adoption, too, of new modes of spelling the Oriental
names, is wholly unnecessary. Harem, turned into Hhareem--Dervish into
Derweesh--Mameluke into Memlook, give no n