On his return in the evening he excited our utmost envy, wonder, and curiosity by giving us an account of his adventures.
In exploring the country they had come to a vine-clad hill, whose farthest side ended in a precipitous bank scarped away by the hand of labour; and spread out below, proceeding out of the bowels of the hill on which they stood, they discovered an ancient Roman town in all its unruined dimensions of streets and squares, theatres and barracks, not gray with the hoar of antiquity, but with all its plastering and painting fresh from the hands of the workmen. The painted borders of the dwelling-rooms, the appropriate pictures of the ladies’ bath, the soldiers’ names engraven rudely on the walls of their barracks, the ruts worn by the Roman wheels, were all fresh despatched to us from former ages.
Of this inestimable present Pliny had described the packing up, by an eruption of Vesuvius, to which he was witness. It was only now half unpacked, and we might yet be at the unpacking of the remainder.
I was ready to jump out of the ship to see with my own eyes these incredible wonders, and when I could go, when I stood in these streets and called, without knocking, upon one ancient Roman after another (though it seemed hardly delicate to explore unbidden the private chambers, whose painting and fresh preservation seemed to infer an occupancy so recent) anticipation was beggared by the trance which that reality imposed.
They show one such things in the Museum of Portici, that the idea of imposture steals involuntarily upon the mind, but yet imposture is out of the question. The king is the showman, and asks nothing for his pains, nor is there any temptation to fabricate the commonest articles of every-day use into the semblance of antiquity in the midst of such a crowd of self-evident realities. Else, when I was shown an egg with a part of the yolk oozing from the crack, looking exactly as if boiled and cracked yesterday, a loaf of bread burnt to a cinder, and a quantity of grain in the same condition, and was told that these things had been baked by the hot ashes of Vesuvius and buried under them for 1700 years, my belief, I must confess, was a little shy. Yet I know not that it is more wonderful with respect to an egg, a loaf, and a heap of corn than with respect to the innumerable rolls of burnt manuscript which we found Mr. Hayter so busy in unrolling with infinite patience and ingenuity, the characters upon the charred papyrus being still perfectly legible.
With respect to other things, vast quantities of tools and kitchen utensils of every description, fit enough for modern use, also very well wrought golden ornaments and elegant glass vessels of all shapes—in these the interest was equally great, and the belief more easy.
To me Herculaneum, the Museum of Portici, and above all Pompeii, were objects of renewed visitation and inexhaustible interest; but far beyond all these artificial curiosities my mind was absorbed by that unutterable wonder of Nature whose irresistible devastations covered and formed the country all around. Indeed the recent destructive torrent yet bore upon its surface the shells of houses and habitations whose inhabitants had been expelled or destroyed.
It seems strange that after all the ruin which this terrible mountain has wrought with subterraneous thunder and ejected fire, the monuments of which endure through ages to tell the people what he has done, yet that all should be insufficient to frighten them away from his foot, while with smoke and fire and inward groans he threatens them daily with still further destruction. Nevertheless they hew the black vomit of his entrails into building stones, and over the spot where the house and its master were buried in a grave of fire do they build another dwelling for another inhabitant.
A curiosity, partaking of religious awe, led me to its summit. I had expected a peep into the mouth of the Inferno, a visible shaft, plumb down into the fiery bowels of the earth, but no mysterious, unfathomable gulf or chimney of the infernal foundry was to be seen. Cracks, indeed, red and white with fire, burnt a good pair of Hoby’s boots off my feet, as they crossed the region of the crater in every direction, and with their sulphurous vapour nearly stifled us all.
November 20.—At this time there was in the environs of Naples a corps of Russians, understood to be 18,000 strong, but what the allies might have hoped to achieve by uniting an Anglo-Russian force of 25,000 or 30,000 men with the native Neapolitan forces, which altogether might pass perhaps in round numbers for an army of 50,000 or 60,000, it is no part of my present object to retrace. The rapid progress of French victory on the Continent would naturally make the hopes under which the expedition left England perfectly inapplicable to the present period. We had intended to assume grand operations in upper Italy in conjunction with the main armies of Austria and Russia. But now it seemed to be the general opinion that if the Anglo-Russian corps could enable the Neapolitan army to protect the frontier of its Sovereign’s dimensions, more could not be expected.