ITALY 133 



years, and fifty-eight times in all, and published a work in three 

 volumes on the Campi Phlegrcei, besides making a collection 

 of Greek and Roman vases which ' forms the groundwork of 

 the present department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the 

 British Museum.' 



At the Court the little Albertine repeated her Roman success. 

 She recited fables before the Queen with much applause. 



During his stay at Naples de Saussure had an experience 

 singularly appropriate for a practical student of electricity. 

 This happened at an assembly of two or three hundred persons, 

 including the Foreign Ministers and nobility of Naples, held 

 in a palace inhabited by Lord Tilney, an Irish peer : 



' The guests, occupied in playing or conversing, were scattered about 

 the six or seven rooms that formed the apartment, when of a sudden 

 the house was struck by lightning. A brilliant flash passed before the 

 eyes of each guest and a noise like the report of a pistol was heard. 

 There was a general panic and a crowd of pale faces, in which one saw 

 depicted fear, superstition, anxiety.' 



Some were unhurt, others felt a bruise or a pain in their limbs. 

 Many were sprinkled with a bright dust, of which at first they could 

 not imagine the origin. But they soon found that this dust came 

 from the gilding of the cornices and furniture. Everywhere sofas 

 and ceilings were blackened, burnt, and stript by the flash. 



' Though the danger was over,' writes de Saussure, ' knowledge of 

 the risk run seemed only to increase the fright. People recognised on 

 the sofa on which they had been sitting the traces of the flame that 

 had run over it. The sofa most seriously damaged was that on which 

 a Neapolitan princess had been sitting between two of her lovers ! 

 It was undoubtedly due to the excessive gilding of the room that we 

 owed our safety. Sir William Hamilton and I went next morning 

 to examine the spot. He wrote an account for the Royal Society, and 

 I one for Paris.' 



At Naples the party lingered till the beginning of May, when they 

 sailed for Palermo, where they were entertained by the Viceroy 

 and the local society of Princesses and Duchesses, and drove out 

 to see the neighbouring churches, convents, and country seats. 

 Thence they crossed the island to Catania, where they stayed 

 with the Prince de Biscari, a rich and patriotic Sicilian and a 



