From what I saw at the Museum, I see no reason to doubt that the ancients were as excellent in painting as in sculpture; there are some very exquisite paintings taken from Pompeii. Then we are not to believe that the best have been found, or that a provincial town contained the finest specimens of the art. Painted on walls, they appear deficient in light and shade, but the drawing and expression, and sometimes the colouring (allowing for spoiling), are very good. There are some Cupids playing at games, and driving chariots, very like the Julio Romanos in the Lanti Villa at Rome, which indeed were borrowed from the ancient frescoes discovered in the Baths of Titus. The bronzes taken out of Herculaneum and Pompeii are very interesting, because they display the whole domestic economy of the ancients, and their excellent taste in furniture, sacrificial instruments, &c., but there is nothing particularly curious in the fact of their pots and pans being like our pots and pans, for if they were to boil and stew they could not well have performed those operations with a different kind of utensils. However, all the people marvel at them; they seem to think the Romans must have been beings of a different organisation, and that everything that is not dissimilar is strange. What is really curious is a surgical instrument which was lately found, exactly similar to one invented thirty years ago in France. The lava would not touch bronze; the iron was always encrusted and spoilt, but the bronze things all look like new.

May 2nd, 1830

Went to the Lake of Agnano and the Grotto del Cane; very pretty lake, evidently the crater of a volcano; saw the dog perform; a sight neither interesting nor cruel; the dog did not mind it a bit, and the old woman must make a fortune, for she had eight carlins for it. The grotto is very hot and steaming; a torch goes out held near the ground, and when I put my face down the steam from the earth went up my nose like salts. Virgil’s Tomb, which is very picturesque, and from whence the common view of Naples is taken; there has been plenty of discussion whether it really is Virgil’s tomb or not. Forsyth seems to doubt it, with one of his off-hand flings at the authority for its being so, a sort of ‘Who the Devil, I humbly beg to know, is Donatus?’ but there is tradition in its favour, the fact of Virgil having been buried here or hereabouts, and the honour being claimed by no other spot. When there is probability it is unwise to be so very sceptical: take away names, and what are the places themselves? Here not much, at Rome nothing.

Thursday.

Went a long and most beautiful ride up to the Camaldoli, from which the view extends over sea and land to an immense distance in every direction.

Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various views.

The convent was once very rich, but the French stripped all the convents of their property, which they have never since recovered. It is remarkably clean and spacious. Each monk has a house of his own containing two or three little rooms, and a little garden, and they only eat together on particular days. The old man who took us about said he had been there since he was eighteen, had been turned out by the French, but came back as soon as he could, and had never regretted becoming a monk. He showed me a bust of the founder of their order (I think San Romualdo), and when I asked him how many years ago it was founded, he said, ‘Perhaps 2,000.’ I said when I became a monk I would go to that convent, when he asked very seriously if I was going to be a monk. I said, ‘Not just yet.’ ‘Very well,’ he said; ‘you must pay 120 ducats, and you can come here.’ We went down a road cut for miles in the mountain, very narrow and steep, through shady lanes, groves, and vineyards (with magnificent views), through Pianura to Pozzuoli, entering by the old Roman road and Street of Tombs. The columbaria in the Street of Tombs are the best worth seeing ejus generis of any. Went to the Temple of Jupiter Serapis, of which there are very curious remains. RUINS ABOUT NAPLES

Hard by the reverent ruins
Of a once glorious temple, reared to Jove,
Whose very rubbish (like the pitied fall
Of virtue, most unfortunate) yet bears
A deathless majesty, though now quite rased,
Hurl’d down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that where holy Flamens wont to sing
Sweet hymns to Heaven, there the daw and crow,
The ill-voiced raven, and still chattering pie
Send out ungrateful sounds.
Marston.

To the ruins of the Amphitheatre, from the top of which there is one of the finest views I ever saw of the Bay of Baiæ and the islands; and then to the Solfaterra. The ruins scattered about Naples (those at Pozzuoli, for instance) are far more extensive than most of those at Rome, but partly ‘carent quia vate sacro,’ and partly because there are no well-known names attached to them, the ground is not so holy, and little is said or thought about them. If these temples were at Rome, what an uproar they would cause! The Solfaterra is remarkable as a sort of link between the quick and the dead volcanoes; it is considered extinct, but the earth is hot, the sulphur strong, and at a particular spot, when a hole is made, it hisses and throws up little stones and ashes, and exhibits a sort of volcano in miniature, but the surface of the crater is overgrown with vegetation. The road to Naples by the convent of the Jesuits and Chapel of St. Januarius is the most beautiful I ever saw, particularly towards sunset, when the colouring is so rich and varied. It lies over a crest commanding a prospect of the mountains on one side and the sea on the other.

Quid mille revolvam
Culmina visendique vices.