No. II. — Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabile. 109 



tions. It seems most natural to proceed next to an account of 

 by far the most extraordinary effect of its volcanic agency now- 

 extant, the cities buried under its ejected materials, and now, 

 after a repose of between seventeen and eighteen centuries, 

 opened to the view of mankind, and calling them to survey, in 

 a form more forcible than words can paint, the habits, the pe- 

 culiarities, the domestic comforts, the public luxuries, the 

 baths, the theatres, the villas, and the tombs, of another age 

 of men ; a scene which opens a sort of enchantment to us, pre- 

 served as by a miracle from that slow but ruthless power, which 

 in the meantime, 



" So oft has swept the toiling race of men, 

 And all their laboured monuments, away." 



In a subject like this, I shall be excused for not adhering 

 rigidly to the physical appearances which the buried cities now 

 present to the eye of the naturahst. I shall be permitted to ex- 

 tend some remarks to the ancient history of these ill-fated towns, 

 the event by which they w^ere overwhelmed, and the illustra- 

 tions of antiquity which their excavation presents. 



The authorities to which I can refer in my present work are 

 much more abridged and unsatisfactory than when writing on 

 Vesuvius ; and if in combining the results of my personal ob- 

 servation with the remarks of others, I may appear desultory 

 in my arrangement, I must crave the indulgence of the reader, 

 in consideration of the remarkable want of any work on the 

 physical history of the objects I have undertaken to elucidate, 

 and the numerous sources to which I must be indebted for 

 facts in almost every page of the narrative. Pompeii and 

 Herculaneum have been peculiarly unfortunate in the de- 

 scriptions of all classes of travellers. While some with Eustace 

 confine themselves to a detail of classical and sentimental ex- 

 pressions, which, however interesting to the visitor, and how- 

 ever they may press themselves on his attention, cannot be suf- 

 ficiently varied in expression to please the public ear, told as 

 they are for the twentieth time ; others, with Barthelemy, Cay- 

 lus, and Mazzochi, have dwelt chiefly upon the benefits, every 

 day becoming more problematical, to be derived from the dis- 

 covery of papyrus rolls; and a larger number give merely ca- 

 talogues of the more remarkable features of the excavated 



