DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70267#0340
304 A CURIOUS ACCOUNT OF THE .
guessing at whereabout you are after two or three?
turnings.
“ At the further end of Portici, towards Torre di Greco,
you descend by 50 stone steps, which convey you over the
wall of a theatre, lined with white marble, which, if the
hearth and rubbish were cleared out of it, would, I believe,
be found to be very entire. By what is seen of it, I don’t
imagine it to have been much bigger than one of Our ordi-
nary theatres in London.—And that it was a theatre and
not an amphitheatre, appears by a part of the scene,
which is to be plainly distinguished.—It is, I think, of
stucco, and adorned with compartments of grotesque work,
of which and grotesque paintings, there is a greal deal,
scattered up and down in the several parts of the town.
“ When you have left the theatre, you enter into the'
narrow passages, where on one hand of you, (for you sel-
dom or never see any particular object to be distinguished
on each hand at once, because of the narrowness of the
passages,) you have v-alls lined and crusted over, some-
times with marble, sometimes with stucco, and sometimes
you have walls of bare brick ; but almost throughout, you
see above and about you, pillars of marble or stucco crushed
©r broken, or lying in all sorts of directions. Sometimes
you have plainly the outsides of walls of buildings that have
apparently fallen inwards ; and sometimes the insides of
buildings that have fallen outwards: and sometimes have
apparently both the insides and outsides of buildings that
stand upright; and many of them would, I dare say, be
found to be entire, as several of them have in part been
found to be.
“ To make an end of this general description, you have
all the way such a confusion of brick and tiles, and mortar
and marble cornices and friezes, and other members and
ornaments, together with stucco, and beams and rafters,
and
guessing at whereabout you are after two or three?
turnings.
“ At the further end of Portici, towards Torre di Greco,
you descend by 50 stone steps, which convey you over the
wall of a theatre, lined with white marble, which, if the
hearth and rubbish were cleared out of it, would, I believe,
be found to be very entire. By what is seen of it, I don’t
imagine it to have been much bigger than one of Our ordi-
nary theatres in London.—And that it was a theatre and
not an amphitheatre, appears by a part of the scene,
which is to be plainly distinguished.—It is, I think, of
stucco, and adorned with compartments of grotesque work,
of which and grotesque paintings, there is a greal deal,
scattered up and down in the several parts of the town.
“ When you have left the theatre, you enter into the'
narrow passages, where on one hand of you, (for you sel-
dom or never see any particular object to be distinguished
on each hand at once, because of the narrowness of the
passages,) you have v-alls lined and crusted over, some-
times with marble, sometimes with stucco, and sometimes
you have walls of bare brick ; but almost throughout, you
see above and about you, pillars of marble or stucco crushed
©r broken, or lying in all sorts of directions. Sometimes
you have plainly the outsides of walls of buildings that have
apparently fallen inwards ; and sometimes the insides of
buildings that have fallen outwards: and sometimes have
apparently both the insides and outsides of buildings that
stand upright; and many of them would, I dare say, be
found to be entire, as several of them have in part been
found to be.
“ To make an end of this general description, you have
all the way such a confusion of brick and tiles, and mortar
and marble cornices and friezes, and other members and
ornaments, together with stucco, and beams and rafters,
and