Volume I Part 31 (2/2)

I was disappointed with the country, which is bare and uninteresting; but the line of coast, with the various bays and proreeable, and the Bay of Baiae, with the Tehtful The Te The Cave of the Sybil, Lake Avernus, and Te, but as they are celebrated by Virgil they ination and the lapse of tier presents the same aspect; for there is a mountain il's tilish, the other French, the latter the , andcavalcade

There was a fat old gentle with delight to his ladies, 'Ah, mesdaets in the cave is a blackened face froure of the party in a fur cap, as playing the flute--

His reedy pipe with music fills, To charm the God who loves the hills And rich Arcadian scenery

We landed fro down the Cento Ca

All the ruins, said to be of Caesar's and Marius's Villas, Agrippina's To but shapeless fragments, only on a rock I saw a bit of ian Lake presented no horrors, nor the Elysian Fields any delights; the forreat round piece of water, and the latter are very co vineyards When ooded, which in the time of the Romans it was, this coast must have been a most delicious and luxurious retreat, so sequestered and sheltered, such a cali; ponunt hic lassa furorem Aequora, et insani spirant clementius Austri

We went up to look at the old harbour of Misenu-boats, and walked back through fields in which spring was bursting forth through endless varieties of cultivation--figs,fro up underneath

Our boatlish, and kept on saying 'Pull away,' 'Now boys,' and other phrases they have picked up fro we set off to come here [to Salerno] with Vetturino horses; the dust intolerable; stopped at Pompeii, and walked half round the walls and to the Around (now covered with vineyards) belongs to the King (for Murat bought it); the profusion and brilliancy of the wild flowers arden--

Floorthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon Pours forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain

[Page Head: EXCAVATIONS AT POMPEII]

If Murat had continued on the throne two or three years longer, the whole toould have been excavated He, and still reat interest in it, and they both went there frequently She used to see the houses excavated, and one day they found the skeleton of a woht to her, and she put them on herself directly In their time 800 men and 50 cars were at work; now there are 40 men and 6 cars The expense of 800 men and 50 cars would be about 13,000 a year, but these

A car costs a scudo, and a man four carlins, a day (A scudo is ten carlins, a carlin fourpence) The Royal Family seldom or never come here; the Duke of Calabria has been once The Ah not to be compared in size or beauty with the Coliseum, is much more perfect The road here is beautiful, particularly about La Cava I walked up to the Convent of the Trinita; it stands on the brink of a deep ravine in the middle of the hills, which are tossed into a hundred different shapes and covered with foliage--a e, and well kept; it contains fiftyabout the road Here were all the rawsun,bell, friars, and peasants

Arrived here, delighted with the outside and disgusted with the inside of the town; but the Bay of Salerno is beautiful, the place gay and populous, all staring at a fire-balloon which was just ascending, and soon after caot into one at last, in which there is a wide terrace looking over the sea, and there we ordered our dinner to be laid; but ere soon driven in, not by the cold, but by the flaring of our tallow candles

We were obliged to write our names down for the police, who are very busy and inquisitive One man, whose name was just before mine, had added this poetical encouidanza_ For those who are going to Paestuood place to eat and to rest 'em

I could not concur with this poet, so I added tosuch a good treat Weto eat, But ourselves were ate up by e Head: PAESTUM]

Naples, April 25th, 1830 {p344}

Started at four o'clock in the ht Torars and ciceroni (often both characters in one), for in Italy everybody who shows a stranger about is a cicerone, from Professor Nibby down to a Calabrian peasant There is little beauty in the scenery of Paestum, but the teree with Forsyth that they are the most impressive monuments I have ever seen The famed roses of Paestum have disappeared, but there are thousands of lizards 'nunc virides etiam occultant spineta lacertos' No excavations have ever beenThere were some fine Etruscan vases found in a tomb at Paestu of it, nor should I if I had not seen the model in the Museuing; they are found in all the toes of terra cotta and coins, which they offer for sale I believed they were fabricated, but a man I met there showed me two or three that he had turned up with his stick, so that they enuine What treasures Naples possesses, and hoorthy she is of thelected, and Po and doing soh the Papal Government is neither active nor rich, I do believe they would not let this town (Pompeii, Iit all to light There seem to be no habitations near Paestum, but there is a church, which ell attended, for the peasants were on their knees all round it; and while ere breakfasting (in a e-looking figures, rude, uncouth, and sunburnt, and without any of the finery which they generally wear on a Sunday

[1] The authorities of course can't agree when Paestum was built, and by whoest) was a temple or a basilica The perfect state of these temples, particularly that called of Neptune, is the es of other buildings Morier thought them inferior to the temples at Athens, but so they may well be; the Athenian temples are built of white hly ornamented by Phidias

Naples, April 26th, 1830 {p345}

To the Museuood-looking daughter and two sons They will have all Prince Borghese's estate I only went into the Pompeii and Herculaneu Thisfour of them stripped stark naked under my , put off in a boat, and thirty yards from the shore fished for cockle fish, which they do by diving like ducks, throwing their feet up in the air as the ducks do their tails The creatures are perfectly amphibious; they don't care who sees them, and their for ones Met a christening this , and then a funeral The wet nurse, full dressed, was carried in a sedan chair down the middle of the street, and the child, dressed also, held out of thein her ar to church The funeral was a priest's--a long file of penitents in white, carrying torches, a bier covered with criold, and the priest dressed in robes and exposed upon it, a ghastly sight, with a chalice in his hand and a book at his feet, other priests following, the cross borne before hiaily dressed with chaplets of flowers, a flower in the mouth, and flowers at their feet

Rode to the race-course and round the hills; such views and such an evening! At seven o'clock I could see the houses at Sorrento, nineteen miles off on the other side of the Bay Dined with Acton; none but English In the evening went to Toledo, the Spanish A talked of an association to excavate at Calabria and Apulia The Government reserves four places--Pompeii, Paestum, Stabiae, Herculaneum--for its own use, and anybody may excavate elsewhere ill be at the trouble and expense