o refine upon their ideas, and copy their
creations. With all our new invented machines, and engines, we can do
little more than what the ancients performed without them.

I ought not to forget one room containing some objects, more curious
and amusing than beautiful, principally from Pompeii, such as loaves
of bread, reduced to a black cinder, figs in the same state, grain of
different kinds, colours from a painter's room, ear-rings and
bracelets, gems, specimens of mosaic, etc. etc.

* * * * *

_March 7._--Frattinto brought me to-day the last numbers of the
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews: a great treat so far from home. Both
contain some clever essays: among them, an article on prisons, in the
Edinburgh, interested me most.

Methinks these two Reviews stalk through the literary world, like the
two giants in Pulci's Morgante Maggiore: the one pounding, slaying,
mangling, despoiling with blind fury, like the heavy orthodox
club-armed Morgante; the other, like the sneering, witty, half-pagan,
half-baptized Margutte, slashing and cutting, and piercing through
thick and thin; _a tort et a travers_. Truly the simile is more
a-propos than I thought when it first occurred to me.

I went the other day to a circulating library and reading-room kept
here by a little cross French-woman, and asked to see a catalogue. She
showed me, first, a list of all the books, Italian, French, and
English, she was allowed to keep and sell: it was a thin pamphlet of
about one hundred pages. She then showed me the catalogue of
prohibited books, which was at least as thick as a good sized octavo.
The book to which I wished to refer, was the second volume of
Robertson's Charles the Fifth. After some hesitation, Madame P** led
me into a back room; and opening a sliding pannel, discovered a shelf
let into the wall, on which were arranged a number of authors, chiefly
English and French. I was not surprised to find Rousseau and Voltaire
among them; but am still at a loss to guess what Robertson has done or
written to entitle him to a place in such select company.

8th.--Forsyth might well say that Naples has no parallel on earth.
Viewed from the sea it appears like an amphitheatre of palaces,
temples and castles, raised one above another, by the wand of a
necromancer: viewed within, Naples gives me the idea of a vast
Bartholomew fair. No street in London is ever so crowded as I have
seen the streets of Naples. It