182 



their being found among the Herculaneum ma- 

 nuscripts ? 



"Very little indeed," he replied. " When 

 those famous rolls of papyrus were disinterred 

 nearly eighty years ago, great expectations 

 were formed, of the literary riches they might 

 contain. Their original number was 1700, but 

 by far the greater part were found, on closer 

 inspection, to be so mangled that there was not 

 the least probability of recovering any portion of 

 their contents. Of those that were in a better 

 condition, many were destroyed by the first 

 awkward attempts to unrol them ; and, unfor- 

 tunately, the remainder have suffered great 

 additional injury from long exposure to the air." 



" I should have thought," said Wentworth, 

 " that having been partly charred by fire, they 

 would be proof against air and damp ; as we find 

 old stumps of charred gate posts in the ground, 

 which seem to have remained there an immense 

 time, perfectly unchanged." 



" Your reasoning," replied my uncle, *' would 

 not apply to this case, even if the papyri had 

 undergone the action of fire, because it is since 

 their exposure to the atmosphere that they have 

 suffered. They have, indeed, all the appear- 

 ance of charcoal, even the sticks on which they 

 are rolled ; and it was therefore very naturally 

 supposed that this effect had been produced by 



