I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a world! Anything like a full description of it would tire even an antiquary. It is one of those things (and there are many in Europe) that fortunately compel travel. You must come abroad to get an idea of it.

The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at Pompeii. After walking through the chambers and streets where they were found, I came to them naturally with an intense interest. I had visited a disentombed city, buried for seventeen centuries-bad trodden in their wheel-tracks-had wandered through their dining-rooms, their chambers, their baths, their theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered in one place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking-utensils, their ornaments, the very food as it was found on their tables! I am puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention. The catalogue fills a printed volume.

A cu ious cour in one of the cases was that containing the articles found on the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian's wife. Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, small silver mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, etc., etc. In the next case were two loaves of bread, found in a baker's oven, and stamped with his name. Two large cases of precious gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the centre. of this room (among which, by the way, the most exquisitely done are two which one cannot look at without a blush). Another case is filled with eatables, found upon the tables-eggs, fish-bones, honey-comb, grain, fruits, etc. In the repository for ancient glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of the dead are perfectly preserved; and numerous small glass lachry

matories, in which the tears of the survivors were deposited in the tombs.

The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly, are of the most curious and beautiful models. Trees, to which the lamps were suspended like fruit, vines, statues holding them in their hands, and numerous other contrivances, were among them, exceeding far in beauty any similar furniture of our time. It appears that the ancients did not know the use of the fork, as every other article of table service except this has been found here.

To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in this museum, one must imagine a modern city, Boston for example, completely buried by an unexpected and terrific convulsion of nature. Its inhabitants mostly escape, but from various causes leave their city entombed, and in a hundred years the grass grows over it, and its very locality is forgotten. Near two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging in the field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed just as it stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures, houses, and streets, in untouched preservation. What a subject for speculation! What food for curiosity! What a living and breathing chapter of history were this! Far more interesting is Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished and the characters who trod its streets, are among the most remarkable in history. This brazen lamp, shown to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit every evening in the time of Christ. The handsome chambers through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and doubtless had been honored by the visits of Cicero (whose villa, half-excavated, is near by,) and by all the poets and scholars and

statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus! And it is that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He needs no amusements, no company, no books except the history of the place. The spot is peopled wherever he may stray, and the common necessities of life seem to pluck him from a fareaching dream, in which he had summoned back receding ages, and was communing, face to face, with philosophers and poets and emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and Herculaneum seem to me visions. I cannot shake myself and wake to their reality. My mind refuses to go back so far. Seventeen hundred years!

I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing enumeration, and looking at everything as he pointed to it, in a kind of stupor. One has but a certain capacity. We may be overastonished. Still he went on in the same every-day tone, talking as indifferently of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar of his two-penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the hall of the papyri—thence to the hall of the frescoes, and beautiful they were. Their very number makes them indescribable. The next morning we devoted to the statuary—and of this, if I knew where to begin, I should like to say a word or two.

First of all comes the Balbi family-father, mother, sons and daughters. He was proconsul of Herculaneum, and by the excellence of the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and his family were worth the artist's best effort. He is a fine old Roman himself, and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much better-looking than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi are modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were the high-born damsels of Herculaneum, however; and, if human nature has

not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers who compared them to the Venuses who have descended with them to the "Museo Borbonico." The eldest son is on horseback in armor. It is one of the finest equestrian statues in the world. He is a noble youth, of grave and handsome features, and sits the superb animal with the freedom of an Arab and the dignity of a Roman. It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited these Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he could scarcely feel more acquainted with them than after having seen their statues as they stand before him here.

Come a little farther on! Bacchus on the shoulders of a faun -a child delighted with a grown-up playfellow. I have given the same pleasure to just such another bright "picture in little" of human beauty. It moves one's heart to see it.

Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries and Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristides-him whom the Athenians exiled because they were tired of hearing him called The Just." Canova has marked three spots upon the floor where the spectator should place himself to see to the best advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped in his toga, with his head a little inclined, as if in reflection, and in his face there is a mixture of firmness and goodness from which you read his character as clearly as if it were written across his forehead. It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the simplest and most expressive statue in the world.

LETTER V.

P'æstum-Temple of Neptune-Departure from Elba-Ischia-Bay of Naples-The Toledo-The Young Queen-Conspiracy against the King-Neapolitans Visiting the Frigates-Leave the Bay-Castellamare.

I was

SALVATOR ROSA studied the scenery of La Cava―the country between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to Pæstum. It is a series of natively abrupt glens, but gemmed with cottages and hanging gardens, through which the wildness of every feature is as apparent as those of a savage through his trinkets. going to Pæstum with an agreeable party, and we came out upon the bluffs overhanging Salerno and the sea, an hour before sunset. We darted down upon the little city lying in the bend of the bay, like a bird's descent upon her nest. The road is cut through the side of the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single sweep. We were to pass the night here and go to Pæstum the next morning, see the ruins, and return here to sleep once more before returning to Naples.

We were five or six miles from Salerno before sunrise, and entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside, and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flourishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight We