a palace of the king of Naples, six miles from that capital. It has a charming situation on the sea-side, near Mount Vesuvius. It is enriched with a vast number of fine statues, and other remains of antiquity, taken out of the ruins of Herculaneum.

The museum consists of 16 rooms, in which the different articles are arranged with very great taste. The floors are paved with mosaic, taken from the recovered towns, and the walls of the court are lined with inscriptions. Besides busts, statues, medals, intaglios, lamps, and tripods, there is scarcely an article used by the ancients of which a specimen may not be seen in this museum. "But the most valuable room is the library, from the numerous manuscript rolls which it contains. What a field is here for conjecture! what room for hope! Among this inestimable collection, how many great works are there, of which even the names are now unknown! how many unbroken volumes, whose very fragments, preserved in the writings of the ancient scholars, convey to us moral improvement, information, and delight! perhaps, all the dramatic pieces of Menander and Philemon; perhaps, nay, certainly, the lost Decades of Livy; for it is impossible to suppose, that among so many rolls, the most admired history of the people who possessed them is not to be found: what private library in Britain is without the best histories of England? But how I tremble for their situation, as Portici is built on the lava that overwhelmed Herculaneum! How I tremble too for the indifference of the king of Naples towards this invaluable treasure, in which all the most enlightened people of Europe are deeply interested! When I first saw them, I had no idea of what they were, as they resemble wooden truncheons burnt almost to charcoal. They are so hard and brittle, that the greatest caution must be used in removing them, lest they crumble to dust; nevertheless, an ingenious friar of Genoa, named Raggio, undertook to unroll them; and by a most curious, though tedious process, so far succeeded, as to transcribe three Greek Treatises on Philosophy and Music; but finding (as I hear) no other encouragement than his salary, which was but little more than you pay some of your servants, the work was unhappily discontinued. Were these manuscripts in England, they would not long remain a secret to the world." See POMPEII.