treasure, and had no regard to the form and being of the building; or to
any circumstances that might give light into its use and history. I
shall finish this long account with a passage which Gray has observed in
Statius, and which directly pictures out this latent city:--

Haec ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam
Littoribus, fractas ubi Vestius egerit iras,
Aemula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis.
Mira fides! credetne virûm ventura propago,
Cum segetes iterum, cum jam haec deserta virebunt,
Infra urbes populosque premi?

SYLV. lib. iv. epist. 4.

Adieu, my dear West! and believe me yours ever.

[Footnote 1: It was known from the account of Pliny that other towns had
been destroyed by the same eruption as Herculaneum, and eight years
after the date of this letter some fresh excavations led to the
discovery of Pompeii. Matthews, in his "Diary of an Invalid," describes
both, and his account explains why Pompeii, though the smaller town,
presents more attractions to the scholar or the antiquarian. "On our way
home we explored Herculaneum, which scarcely repays the labour. This
town is filled up with lava, and with a cement caused by the large
mixture of water with the shower of earth and ashes which destroyed it;
and it is choked up as completely as if molten lead had been poured into
it. Besides, it is forty feet below the surface, and another town is now
built over it.... Pompeii, on the contrary, was destroyed by a shower of
cinders in which there was a much less quantity of water. It lay for
centuries only twelve feet below the surface, and, these cinders being