then in re-filling the orifice--an excellent method of forming a museum
by destroying Pompeii. This method was abandoned so soon as it was
discovered that a whole city was involved. The second system, which was
gradually brought to perfection in the last century, was earnestly
pursued under Murat. The work was started in many places at once, and
the laborers, advancing one after the other, penetrating and cutting the
hill, followed the line of the streets, which they cleared little by
little before them. In following the streets on the ground-level, the
declivity of ashes and pumice-stone which obstructed them was attacked
below, and thence resulted many regrettable accidents. The whole upper
part of the houses, commencing with the roofs, fell in among the
rubbish, along with a thousand fragile articles, which were broken and
lost without there being any means of determining the point from which
they had been hurled down. In order to obviate this inconvenience,
Signor Fiorelli has started a third system. He does not follow the
streets by the ground-level, but he marks them out over the hillocks,
and thus traces among the trees and cultivated grounds wide squares
indicating the subterranean, islets. No one is ignorant of the fact that
these islets--_isole, insulæ_ in the modern as well as in the ancient
language of Italy--indicate blocks of buildings. The islet traced,
Signor Fiorelli repurchases the land which had been sold by King
Ferdinand I. and gives up the trees found upon it.[A]

"The ground, then, being bought and the vegetation removed, work begins.
The earth at the summit of the hill is taken off and carried away on a
railroad, which descends from the middle of Pompeii by a slope that
saves all expense of machinery and fuel, to a considerable distance
beyond the amphitheatre and the city. In this way, the most serious
question of all, to wit, that of clearing away the dirt, is solved.
Formerly, the ruins were covered in with it, and subsequently it was