VOL. mi.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS: 707 



ranean apartments cut out of the solid rock. These apartments are of various 

 forms and dimensions : some consist of a large outer room, and a small one 

 within ; others of a small room at the first entrance^, and a larger one within : 

 others are supported by a column of the solid rock, left in the centre, with 

 openings on every part, from 20 to 30 feet. The entrance to them all is by a 

 door of about 5 feet in height, by 1 feet and a half in breadth. Some of these 

 have no other light but from the door, while others seem to have had a small 

 light from above, through a hole of a pyramidical form. Many of these apart- 

 ments have an elevated part that runs all round the wall, being a part of the 

 rock left for that purpose. The moveables found in these apartments consist 

 chiefly in Etruscan vases of various forms ; in some indeed have been found 

 some plain sarcophagi of stone with bones in them. The whole of these apart- 

 ments are stuccoed, and ornamented in various manners : some indeed are plain, 

 but others, particularly 3, are richly adorned ; having a double row of Etruscan 

 inscriptions running round the upper parts of the walls, and under it a kind of 

 freize of figures in painting : some have an ornament under the figures that 

 seems to supply the place of an architrave. There have been no relievos in 

 stucco hitherto discovered. The paintings seem to be in fresco, and are in 

 general in the same stile as those usually seen on the Etruscan vases : though 

 some of them are much superior perhaps to any thing as yet seen of the Etrus- 

 can art in painting. The paintings, though in general slight, are well con- 

 ceived, and prove that the artist was capable of producing things more studied 

 and more finished : though in such a subterranean situation, almost void of 

 light, where the delicacy of a finished work would have been in a great measure 

 thrown away ; these artists (as the Romans did in their best ages, when 

 employed in such sepulchral works) have in general contented themselves with 

 slightly expressing their thoughts. But among the immense number of those 

 subterranean apartments which are yet unopened, it is to all appearance very 

 probable that many, and many paintings and inscriptions, may be discovered, suf- 

 ficient to form a very entertaining, and perhaps a very useful work : a work 

 which would doubtless interest all the learned and curious world, not only as it 

 may bring to light, if success attends this undertaking, many works of art, in 

 times of such early and remote antiquity, but as perhaps it may also be the oc- 

 casion of making some considerable discoveries in the history of a nation, in 

 itself very great, though to the regret of all the learned world at present al- 

 most unknown. This great scene of antiquities is almost entirely unknown 

 even in Rome. Mr. Jenkins, then resident at Rome, was the first and only 

 Englishman who ever visited it. 



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