390 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
its grounds in the heart of London, to be vastly more valuable than the grounds 
and Capitol building of the United States ; while its contents range still higher, 
especially during sitting of Congress. * 
There are seven of these grand collections in Europe that are entitled to 
especial pre-eminence. The British, before mentioned, especially eminent for its 
archaeological remains, of which there are some acres — notably the Elgin marbles — 
for its geological, mineralogical, and zoological cabinets; its library, unrivalled so 
far as English books are concerned. 
The Louvre in Paris, which is even more magnificently housed, and more 
elegantly surrounded. This museum is, considering all topics, the most valuable 
in the world. 
The gallery at Dresden, first among collections of paintings. The Pitti and 
Ubizzi Palaces at Florence which contain in mediaeval paintings and antique stat- 
uary together the most famous gathering. 
The Vatican, first in statuary and Roman, Grecian and Egyptian architect- 
ural remains, containing also a half dozen of the very first of paintings. 
And sixth the Museum of Naples. 
These collections are carefully and scientifically catalogued by men of great 
learning in the specialties which their museum covers, and one may see these grey 
old savants slipping about the corridors in big felt slippers and silk skull caps, 
now carrying a precious fragment of some Theban temple, or studying a cast of a 
far-off cuneiform inscription, surrounded by old tomes and charts, and now point- 
ing out to some congenial, sHppered and skull-capped scholar a newly arrived 
ibone of Saurian from Nova Zembla or Arizona. 
In several particulars the Museum of Naples is more especially unique than 
any I have specified, containing as it does the excavated treasures of Her- 
culaneum and Pompeii, of Stabias and Cumse. These are simply unrivalled in all 
the world. Here we have the household effects of a populous city, hermetically 
sealed by the ashes of Vesuvius, during the storms and tempests, during the wars 
and improvements of eighteen hundred years. 
In order to emphasize the intense interest that gathers about the treasures 
excavated from these buried cities, let us for a moment contemplate the Rome of 
the C^sars preserved to us by such an accident as befell Pompeii. Here again, 
there is the Forum with its surrounding temples of marble, decorated with that 
army of living marbles, rifled from Greece, Egypt and all the eastern world ; pos- 
sibly a pilaster still holding the skull of Cicero, or some one of his successors. 
Here are the triumphal arches, carved with victories from York to the third Cat- 
aract. Here is the colosseum not yet unrobed of its marble veneering ; the golden 
house of Nero and his statue one hundred feet in colossal height. Here are the 
golden chariots and the gorgeous armor of the imperial legions. Here is the Circus 
Maximus with its 140,000 seats. The Fora of Augustus and of Trajan. The 
walls, the gates, the battlements, the unbroken arches of the eleven aqueducts 
stretching yonder to the Alban Mountains across the Campagna, among the 
unruined tombs of eraperor and conqueror, of warrior, historian and poet; aye, 
