DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61277#0072
48
ANTIQUE REMAINS.
excavations, discovered various statues and pillars,
and even a whole temple, of the finest marble,
adorned with statues. What a feast for the
antiquary !
But the Neapolitan government quickly inter-
posed, and suspended all farther excavations, for
the space of twenty years; at the expiration of
“This soft matter,” he continues, “hasbeen the means of pre-
serving the pictures, manuscripts, busts, utensils, and other an-
tique remains, which have been recovered out of Herculaneum,
from utter destruction. For, if any of the six succeeding erup-
tions had happened previous to, this, and the red-hot liquid Lava
of which they consisted, had flowed into the open city, it would
have filled every street, scorched up every combustible substance
with intense heat, involving the houses, and all they contained,
in one solid rock of lava, undistinguishable and for ever insepara-
ble from it. The eruption, which buried the city in cinders, earth,
and ashes, has, in some measure, preserved it from the more de-
structive effects of the fiery torrents, which have since overwhelm-
ed it. When we consider that the intervals which elapsed
between those eruptions, were sufficiently long to allow a soil to
be formed upon the hardened lava of earth that a new town
(Portici) has been actually built on the lava of the last eruption,
and that the ancient city is from seventy to one hundred feet
below the present surface of the earth, we must acknowledge it
more surprising that any, than so few, of its ornaments have been
preserved. At the beginning of the last century, any body would
have imagined that the busts, statues, and pictures of Hercula -
neuin had not a much better chance than the persons they
represent of appearing again within a few years upon the surface
of this globe.”
ANTIQUE REMAINS.
excavations, discovered various statues and pillars,
and even a whole temple, of the finest marble,
adorned with statues. What a feast for the
antiquary !
But the Neapolitan government quickly inter-
posed, and suspended all farther excavations, for
the space of twenty years; at the expiration of
“This soft matter,” he continues, “hasbeen the means of pre-
serving the pictures, manuscripts, busts, utensils, and other an-
tique remains, which have been recovered out of Herculaneum,
from utter destruction. For, if any of the six succeeding erup-
tions had happened previous to, this, and the red-hot liquid Lava
of which they consisted, had flowed into the open city, it would
have filled every street, scorched up every combustible substance
with intense heat, involving the houses, and all they contained,
in one solid rock of lava, undistinguishable and for ever insepara-
ble from it. The eruption, which buried the city in cinders, earth,
and ashes, has, in some measure, preserved it from the more de-
structive effects of the fiery torrents, which have since overwhelm-
ed it. When we consider that the intervals which elapsed
between those eruptions, were sufficiently long to allow a soil to
be formed upon the hardened lava of earth that a new town
(Portici) has been actually built on the lava of the last eruption,
and that the ancient city is from seventy to one hundred feet
below the present surface of the earth, we must acknowledge it
more surprising that any, than so few, of its ornaments have been
preserved. At the beginning of the last century, any body would
have imagined that the busts, statues, and pictures of Hercula -
neuin had not a much better chance than the persons they
represent of appearing again within a few years upon the surface
of this globe.”