NA TURl: 



[May 3, 1900 



A.D. 79, and buried the cities of Herculaneum and ! 

 Pompeii in a layer of mingled mud, lava, pumice stone, 

 dust and wet ashes. In less than thirty-six hours 

 Vesuvius had completely blotted out these towns and 

 had covered the ground around for miles with pumice 

 stones, barely as lar^je as wnlnuts, to the depth of ten 



Fig. 2. — View of the Temple of Isis. 



feet. Of the twenty thousand people who are estimated 

 to have been in Pompeii when destruction came upon 

 the doomed country, about two thousand perished, the 

 rest saved themselves by flight ; but fortunately for the 

 people of our own time they were compelled to leave 

 behind them most of the things 

 which describe to the student and 

 antiquary the manner of their lives, 

 and reveal the high standard in 

 luxury and artistic civilisation to 

 which they had attained. The blow _ 



fell so suddenly, and the overwhelm- 

 ing of the city was so swiftly and 

 effectively performed, that men and 

 animals had no time to die in the 

 usual manner, and the ashes which 

 caked round them have preserved 

 forms and scenes which, though be- 

 longing to the dead and dying, are 

 replete with unerring suggestions of 

 life. 



Soon after the city of Pompeii was 

 buried, the survivors came back and .^ 



began to dig out the objects of value ^ 



belonging either to themselves or 

 their friends which they knew to be 

 in the houses. As the upper parts 

 of many of the houses still stood 

 above the pumice stone and ashe^, 

 they were able to locate them in 

 many instances with convenient ac- 

 curacy, and as a result there re- 

 mained in Pompeii, when the search- 

 ers had finished work, but few houses which had not been 

 partly or wholly explored. Anything like a systematic 

 search, however, was never made, and the excavators 

 worked most in the places which seemed to promise 

 the best results. Among others, the builders' labourers 



NO. 1592, VOL. 62] 



made themselves very busy, for the costly stones and 

 marble used in the construction of porticos, vestibules 

 and baths, not to mention the pillars, were eagerly 

 sought after for the building of new villas and houses. 

 When such human vultures had battened on the re- 

 mains of the town, they left what they could not, or 

 would not, carry away to decay 

 and desolation. For fifteen hundred 

 years, Pompeii and its dead slept in 

 peace, and certain pious folk com- 

 forted themselves with the view that 

 its inhabitants, like those of the 

 Cities of the Plain, richly deserved 

 their punishment. About A.D. 1600, 

 D. Fontana, who was occupied in 

 bringing water from the Sarno to 

 Torre Annunziata, cut a conduit 

 through a part of the site of Pompeii, 

 and two inscriptions were found in 

 the course of the work. In 17 19, 

 Count Elbeuf's workmen sank a 

 shaft on the site of Herculaneum, 

 and reached a level corresponding 

 with the stage of the theatre. In 

 1754, a number of tombs at Pompeii 

 were discovered by the road-makers 

 who were working to the south of 

 the city, but no systematic attempt 

 to leave what had been excavated 

 uncovered and visible to all was 

 made until 1763, when the discovery 

 of the inscription of Suedius Clemens 

 definitely proved that the site was 

 that of Pompeii. A year later, the 

 theatres, the Street of Tombs, and 

 the villa of Diomedes were un- 

 covered, and general interest in the work was at last 

 awakened. Between 1806 and 1815, under JosephNapoleon 

 and Murat, the Herculaneum Gate and Forum were exca- 

 vated ; and between 1825 and 1848, a large number of 

 beautiful houses were cleared out and made accessible to 



Fig. 3. — The Temple of Isis restored. 



the curious and the learned. Up to this period, the work 

 of excavation, though carried on with skill and zeal, was 

 exceedingly unscientific ; indeed, judged by the canons of 

 the excavator of to-day, it would be pronounced to possess 

 no system at all. In i860, however, explorations and 



