e is a bath, built after
one of those at Pompeii.

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 {p.347}

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