In The Tombs, They Forced
The Ashes Of The Dead From The Funeral Urns, And Rained New Ruin
Even Into Them.
The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the
skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible hail.
In Herculaneum,
where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled
in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its
height--and that is what is called 'the lava' here.
Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we
now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the stone
benches of the theatre--those steps (for such they seem) at the
bottom of the excavation--and found the buried city of Herculaneum.
Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by
great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches,
shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd
places, confusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered dream.
We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that THIS
came rolling in, and drowned the city; and that all that is not
here, has been cut away, by the axe, like solid stone. But this
perceived and understood, the horror and oppression of its presence
are indescribable.
Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of both
cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh
and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday. Here are
subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses,
and the like; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables,
always forcibly and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling,
sporting, working at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading
their productions to their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the
walls; political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by
schoolboys; everything to people and restore the ancient cities, in
the fancy of their wondering visitor.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 242 of 268
Words from 66299 to 66616
of 73541
