A contemplation of the narrow streets which intersect the Toledo in all directions, from the Chiaja to the Museum, would furnish matter for a small volume; but a great part of it would not look well in print. If it ever happen, which is far from impossible, that Naples, like Pompeii, should be surprised by an inundation of ashes from Vesuvius, her disinterred streets will supply ample materials for a secret sanctum in some future museum! It is a consolation, however, to reflect that no resurrection of this kind can ever bring to light the horribly revolting proofs of human depravity which the apartments of POMPEII have so unequivocally revealed!

So keen and sensitive a people as the Neapolitans must rapidly improve by intercourse with their northern neighbours, and not adhere, like the Chinese and Hindoos, to the same path which their forefathers trode, from time immemorial. Half a century, indeed, of peace and commerce would go far to obliterate all distinctions among the people of Europe, excepting those topographical and natural peculiarities which are unchangeable by time or circumstance. This general amalgamation, resulting from intimacy of communion, is wonderfully promoted by that unceasing propensity in human nature to imitate the good as well as the evil examples of our neighbours. Thus vice and virtue-folly and wisdom-industry and sloth, are perpetually tending to a level or equilibrium among nations, like temperature among different material substances. If the Neapolitans acquire some ideas of comfort, utility, and cleanliness from their numerous British visitors, the latter will, no doubt, import a liberal equivalent of all the most prominent features of Italian manners, sentiments, and principles. Commerce is not confined to the exchange of wines, oils, cotton, and cutlery. It extends to much less ponderable substances to thoughts, words, actions, and even passions. The reciprocal traffic, in these commodities, between Great Britain and the Continent, has, for many years, been more active than in those multifarious articles which are entered at the Custom-house, on both sides of the Channel. In this respect, the system of FRee trade is as unshackled as its most enthusiastic advocates could desire. The results will be seen in time.

A great complaint is made against Naples on account of its deficiency, or almost total want of architectural ruins and antiquities, as compared with Rome. This complaint is just, as far as architecture is concerned; but the defect is more than atoned for by the beauties of Nature, and the unique antiquities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. If Florence has its Venus, and Rome its Apollo-Naples has its Toro, its Hercules-and, what is worth the whole four-its ARISTIDES! I am doubtful whether I should not prefer the Museo Borbonico to the Vatican, if the gift of one of these invaluable treasures were offered to me.

SIROCCO-TRAMONTANE HERCULANEUM.

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POMPEII.

If a stranger were to arrive at Naples, by sea, and that for the first time, in the month of November or December, he would be apt to form a very erroneous idea of the climate, according to the point from which the wind blew. If it came from the SOUTH, he would be inclined to think that there was little difference between Naples and the black-hole of Calcutta. If from the NORTH-EAST, he would begin to doubt whether he had not sailed in a wrong direction, and made the Gulph of Finland, instead of the Gulph of Salerno. If a gentle North-West zephyr skimmed the surface of the deep and wooed the shores of Baiæ, he might be tempted to think that he had got into the gardens of the Hesperides, or the isles of Atlantis, so green is vegetation, so balmy the air, so mellow the sun-beams, and so azure the skies!

YESTERDAY, the SIROCCO-" Auster's sultry breath"-steamed over Naples, depressing the animal spirits and the vital energies to the lowest ebb. It is impossible to convey in words any adequate idea of the sedative effects of this wind on mind as well as body. I tried to respire in freedom on the roof of the Vittoria on the Chiaja-the Mole-the Chiatomone; but found no relief from the nervous depression and muscular languor induced by this mephitic composition of rarified air and aqueous exhalation. I hired a calessino and drove round the promontory of Posilipo-and afterwards ascending to the airy castle of ST. ELMO, wandered through the beautiful church of ST. MARTINO-but all in vain! From lassitude of body and dejection of mind there was no escape, while this accursed blast prevailed.

TO-DAY, started at sunrise, in an open barouche, for POMPEII, under the chilling influence of a TRAMONTANE, or North-easter, that came down in piercing gusts from the Apennines, more cutting and keen than the winds that sweep along the Winter snows of Siberia. In passing through PORTICI, I could scarcely help envying as well as pitying the LAZARONI, Stowed in rows, like sailors' hammocks, along the sunny sides of the streets, sheltered from the blast, and basking in the rays of a glorious luminary.

As the carriage rolled rapidly over the volcanic grave of HERCULaneum, hollow murmurs echoed from the chambers of the dead beneath; while fancy assimilated these melancholy sounds with the dying groans of its entombed inhabitants, when the terrific surge of boiling lava curled for an instant against the ramparts, and then swept, with relentless fury, over the devoted city! No sight-no idea is so agonizing to the human mind, as that of protracted torture and lingering death. Fortunately for the Herculaneans, their sufferings were momentary, and instant destruction released them from the horrors of the scene! The nature of the fatal torrent which inhumed Herculaneum, and filled every crevice with solid stone, will probably prevent its ever being excavated.

From Portici to Pompeii, the country is any thing but lovely, as some travellers have represented it. It is a dreary waste of black scoriæ, sprinkled with habitations and patches of cultivation. It is impossible to drive over this scene of volcanic desolation, without casting an eye of distrust, if not of fear, towards that giant of mischief who rises on our left,-from whose mouth, the curling and carbonaceous breath ascends to mingle with the blue ether, in long wreaths of smoaky clouds-and from whose troubled paunch so many rivers of liquid fire and showers of burning ashes have been vomited forth over the plains which we are now crossing!

It is not the least remarkable trait in the human mind, and one which distinguishes man from other animals more than any characteristic pointed out by philosophers—I mean that prying curiosity, which is as intense in respect to the past as to the future. We approach POMPEII, a city which would appear to have been preserved as a most piquant condiment for antiquarian stomachs, with as much anxiety to know how the inhabitants lived eighteen hundred years ago, as the blushing maiden feels, on consulting the oracle as to her future matrimonial destinies. We advanced towards the Herculanean gate, through a double line of tombstones, with breathless expectation and palpitating hearts. We know that men and women have died in all ages, and that grateful friends or joyful heirs have erected monuments to their memory. But modern feeling-perhaps prejudice-is hardly prepared for that association of ideas which converted the marble coverings of the dead into cool and pleasant couches for social conversation, if not hilarity, among the living. Such was evidently the secondary, perhaps the principal object and use of the tombs of Pompeii.

Among these mansions of the dead, and nearly opposite to each other, stand two of the amplest abodes of the living, which are seen either within or without the walls. One was a private, the other a public edifice-one, the VILLA of some rich citizen-an alderman-Sir William Diomede, of Lombard Street, or Threadneedle Street, Pompeii-the other, a hotel of ample dimensions which was, no doubt, a fashionable rendezvous for the Cockney Pompeians in the first century of the Christian æra. The accommodations which it afforded for man and beast-or rather for beastly man, are but too unequivocal; —and indeed the interior of this inn, as well as the apartments of private houses throughout this city, perpetually recals to memory the terrible but not undeserved fate of SODOM and GOMORRHA!* Only five human skeletons,

* The learned ABBATE JORIO, who has taken such pains to delineate Pompeii, very naturally slurs over the disgusting scenes of depravity which that city commemorates, but was not able entirely to conceal them. Speaking of this hotel, he observes—“ On voyait dans l'interieur pleusieurs boutiques pour des marchands, soit des comestibles, soit d'objets assez communs, ainsi que l'extreme grossièreté de l'enduit et des peintures, &c."-PLAN DE POMPEII.

DIOMEDE'S MANSION.

209

and the bones of an unfortunate ass-all mingled pell mell, were found in this HOSTELRIE !

The inmates of Sir Diomede's mansion were not so fortuuate in making their escape. In travelling round the immense wine-cellar of this wealthy cit, who, by the way, was only a FREEDMAN, and some of whose amphoræ still stand as they were packed and labelled seventeen centuries ago, we naturally pause at the spot where twenty-eight human beings perished-principally young persons- one a female, with numerous golden ornaments ! This villa presents the best idea that can possibly be formed of an ancient Roman residence, because it is on a large scale. We enter it by a flight of steps from the street, or rather the road, and soon find ourselves in the usual open court, surrounded by a covered portico, with a fountain in the middle, and innumerable apartments, or rather cells, opening in all directions towards this central area. If the condemned criminals in Newgate were confined in such dark and unventilated cells as the sleeping chambers of Diomede's mansion, (the best in Pompeii) there would soon be a rebellion in England! In two only of these apartments, as far as I could discover, was there any other aperture for light or air, except the small door to each, of 'some two feet in breadth. Few of these dormitories would hold more than a small tent bed, and how the family could breathe in such living tombs, I am unable to divine! It is clear, however, that Lady Diomede slept in a very respectable chamber that had windows, with good plate glass, opening upon a terrace which commanded a view of the sea and neighbouring country. I say Lady Diomede, because, in this chamber was found a toilet well furnished with paints and all kinds of cosmetics for beautifying the skin. Whether Sir Diomede was so unfashionable as to partake of her Ladyship's bed, I am not antiquarian enough to decide. The other windowed and glazed apartment is the warm-bath, well supplied with flues and stoves for that grand and daily luxury of the ancients. The cellar, which would contain wine enough for twenty Albion or Free-Masons' Taverns, runs round and under the whole of the garden, and is lighted, as well as ventilated, by portholes from above. Sir Diomede must have been a jovial soul! His amphora were much better lodged, and had much ampler space for repose than the whole of his family, slaves and all included!

The private houses in Pompeii, and the house of Diomede, par excellence, shew us at once, how the people lived. Each family met, when they did meet, in the open court of the house-while their masters assembled, and might be said to live, in the public porticos and public hotels of the city! Such was the state of society among the ancients; and if we examine the café's and other public places of resort, some of them not the most moral or edifying, in Italy and France, at the present day, we shall find that the state of society, in this respect, has not essentially changed. How the women

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and children contrived to pass their time at home, while the husbands and fathers were lounging in the porticos, the forums, the temples, and hotels, it is not easy to say; but if we may judge by the figures and devices on their work-boxes, vases, flower-pots, lamps, amulets, and walls, we may safely conclude that, in their narrow and darksome cells, the pruriency (I dare not use the proper term) of their minds was at least commensurate with the inactivity of their bodies and the enervating influence of the climate!

The mansion we are contemplating consisted of three stories, and it is probable that none of the houses in Pompeii were of greater altitude-most of them indeed were of less, viz: only one story in height. The diminutive size of the chambers is still surpassed by that of the stairs leading from one flight to another. The trap-hatches through which we see heads and bodies pop up and down on the stage, are prodigious, compared with the stair-cases of Pompeii. Lady Diomede must have given all her routs in the open air, or else the heads and sterns of the fair sex were very different from those of our own times!

And now we pass the diminutive gate, where the side portals were for man, -the central aperture for mules or asses-and enter the city of silence and death-the only one in Italy where the ear is free from the importunity of beggars and douaniers-the eye undisgusted by filth. We pace along the narrow and deserted streets-or we turn into the houses, unroofed, as it were, by the magic spell of some CRUTCHED DEVIL, in order that we might have a distinct view of every act, word, and thought of the inhabitants, at the moment when Vesuvius showered fire and brimstone on their heads, 1756 years ago! Yes! The imaginary coup d'œil of Madrid, as drawn by Le Sage, is here realized. We see and we read, without any equivocation or disguise, the public and private-the moral and physical scenes of Pompeian life!

Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas.

From the dolls, and hoops, and tops, and skip-ropes of childhood, to the skeleton-fingers, clenched round the pieces of gold and silver-(the grasp of age, which the fires of Vesuvius or the agonies of death could not relax)—all were here fixed, arrested, preserved from the corroding tooth of time, and locked up for eighteen centuries to be unfolded and compared with the drama of human life in after ages! It is mortifying to add that from the signs over their doors, to the frescos on the walls of their bed-chambers, there are but too many images to blast and contaminate the eye of modesty, and sicken the heart of philosophy!

The surprise which is excited by a survey of the various implements of domestic economy and luxury, employed by the ancients, as disinterred from the tomb of Pompeii, where they slept since the beginning of the Christian era, and as compared with those now in use, must be natural, else it would not