dth of manner on the
ruins, contradicting all our guesses at things with a sweet "Perdoni,
signori! ma----." At the end, we find that he has some medallions of
lava to sell: there is Victor Emanuel, or, if we are of the _partito
d'azione_, there is Garibaldi; both warm yet from the crater of
Vesuvius, and of the same material which destroyed Herculaneum. We
decline to buy and the custodian makes the national shrug and grimace
(signifying that we are masters of the situation, and that he washes
his hands of the consequence of our folly) on the largest scale that
we have ever seen: his mighty hands are rigidly thrust forth, his
great lip protruded, his enormous head thrown back to bring his
face on a level with his chin. The effect is tremendous, but we
nevertheless feel that he loves us the same.

IV.

The afternoon on which we visited Herculaneum was in melancholy
contrast to the day we spent in Pompeii. The lingering summer had at
last saddened into something like autumnal gloom, and that blue, blue
sky of Naples was overcast. So, this second draught of the spirit
of the past had not only something of the insipidity of custom, but
brought rather a depression than a lightness to our hearts. There was
so little of Herculaneum: only a few hundred yards square are exhumed,
and we counted the houses easily on the fingers of one hand, leaving
the thumb to stand for the few rods of street that, with its flagging
of lava and narrow border of foot-walks, lay between; and though the
custodian, apparently moved at our dejection, said that the excavation
was to be resumed the very next week, the assurance did little to
restore our cheerfulness. Indeed, I fancy that these old cities must
needs be seen in the sunshine by those who would feel what gay lives
they once led; by dimmer light they are very sullen spectres, and
their doom still seems to brood upon them. I know that even Pompeii
could not have been joyous that sunless afternoon, for what there was
to see of mournful Herculaneum was as brilliant with colors as any
thing in the former city. Nay, I believe that the tints of the frescos
and painted columns were even brighter, and that the walls of the
houses were far less ruinous than those of Pompeii. But no house was
wholly freed from lava, and the little street ran at the rear of the
buildings which were supposed to front on some grander avenue not yet
exhumed. It led down, as the custodian pretended, to a wharf, and he