THE MUSEUM OF NAPLES. 393 
either of the pre Raphaslite or the renaissance, just as aggressively as we are for 
or against a metal currency. 
Next we come to the collection of statuary, probably the very best in Europe, 
as it includes many specimens of the very highest order, preserved to us in per- 
fect form by the ashes of Vesuvius, and not with broken noses, dislocated ankles, 
and armless trunks, so common among the statues of northern collections. 
The most productive quarry of statues at Rome has been the moat outside 
the old walls from whence they were thrown as missiles upon the invading Huns. 
Here, at Naples, is a league of corridors filled with heathen deities and busts 
of Grecian and Roman emperors, consuls, famous soldiers, orators, and poets. 
One comes to have a personal acquaintance with many of these marbles by 
their attributes. Here is a Minerva with her helmet ; a Hebe with her cup ; a 
Mercury with winged sandals. You know old Hercules by his muscle and his 
club ; and ^sculapius by his staff entwined by a serpent. Here is a Venus, she 
has no attributes ; she left them at home with her clothes. Fauns and Satyrs 
abound — half human, but wholly animal. Indeed it is from these marbles that 
the modern world obtained its idea of the Gods of the ancients. From these and 
a scant literature we have reconstructed their mythology, drawn our poetical 
figures, and our highest ideals in the art of sculpture. 
It is certainly most curious, not to use a more discouraging term, that we are 
not now able to make a copy of a few of these noblest sculptures ; only the plaster 
casts are fully equal to them. One is almost disposed to complain that they were 
ever discovered, then we should have been satisfied with the great mass of an- 
cient and modern sculpture. But there stands this living dozen and the rest are 
stones. 
So it is with the bronzes. Those that were exhumed from the ruins of the 
buried cities are the finest known. They too evince the inimitable grace of the 
Greek art. There are many large rooms filled with them, and they seem untarn- 
ished by long centuries of exposure to the wet soil. 
There are those here who have had experience of the fragile character of the 
plaster on our western houses. They will be interested in the article produced 
by the builders of the first century. One of the methods of decorating a family 
residence in those days was by painting in fresco, and this was done upon the 
plastered walls. Fortunately for the preservation of this painting, now bearing 
the greatest antiquity of any extant, the plaster was not only able to bear the ter- 
rific shock of centuries of earthquakes; and withstand the drouth and moisture of 
the soil which pressed against it, but also after being exhumed, bore the process 
of being sawn from the walls in sheets, and carriage to the museum, where it 
now lines the sides of many large rooms. These frescoes are all light, graceful 
and fantastic. They are of brightly colored fruits, flowers, and birds — of bac- 
chanals, nymphs, and fauns, of dancing figures, and cup-bearing Hebes. All 
are intended to delight and make life merry. 
I have said that they are the oldest paintings now in existence. In all the 
ruins of Athens not one picture has been preserved. Here and there are famous 
