C I 3 I ] 
lies erant duorum graduum. Non conqulevit acus 
ante meridiem diei fequentis. 
Sed te jam nimis diu detinui, vir teftumatrffime j 
ideoque heic fubfiftens me tuae amicitiae tuoque favori 
etiam atque etiam commendo. Vale. 
Stockholmize, calendis Maii, 
1750. 
XVIII. An ExtraB of a Eetter , dated May 
2, 1750, from Mr. Freeman at Naples, 
to the right hotiour able the Lady Mary Capel, 
relatmg to the Rums of Herculaneum. 
Read Feb. 2 8.'^rT" OU remember, that, about 7 or 3 years 
l 75 °- ago, the difcovery of Herculaneum 
was greatly talk’d of, and reported to have been fwal- 
low’d up by a violent eruption of Mount Vefuvius ; 
which, by the mod accurate accounts, was in the 
firft year of the reign of the emperor Titus, and 79 
years after Chrift. 
The lituation of this antient city is, as it were, at 
the foot of Vefuvius near the fea, and juft at one end 
of the village of Portici, the palace of the king of 
Naples s fummer refidence ; and, I dare fay, a great 
part of the city is under the faid village. 
I was fird: conducted down a narrow pafiage, 
which they have dug wide enough barely for two 
perfons to pafs by each other ; and defcended, by a 
gradual Hope, to the depth of about 6 7 feet perpen- 
dicular. Here I faw a great part of the ancient thea- 
tre, being a building in the form of an horfefhoe. 
That part of it, where is fuppofed to be the orcheftra 
R 2 and 
