Many of the ancient manuscripts found at Herculaneum have been carried to Madrid; but a great number still remain at Portici. Great pains have been bestowed, and much ingenuity displayed, in separating and unrolling the sheets, without destroying the writing. This has succeeded in a certain degree; though, in spite of all the skill and attention of those who are employed in this very delicate work, the copiers are obliged to leave many blanks where the letters are obliterated. The manuscripts hitherto unrolled and copied, are in the Greek language, and not of a very important nature. As the unrolling those papers must take up a great deal of time, and requires infinite address, it is to be wished that his Neapolitan Majesty would send one at least to every university in Europe, that the abilities of the most ingenious men of every country might be exercised on a subject so universally interesting. The method which should be found to succeed best, might be immediately made known, and applied to the unfolding of the remaining manuscripts. The probability of recovering those works, whose loss the learned have so long lamented, would by this means be greatly increased. Herculaneum and Pompeia were destroyed by the same eruption of Mount Vesuvius, about seventeen hundred years ago. The former was a town of much more magnificence than the other; but it is infinitely more difficult to be cleared of the matter which covers it. Sir William Hamilton, in his accurate and judicious observations on Mount Vesuvius, asserts, that there are evident marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken its course over this devoted town, since the great explosion which involved it in the same fate with Pompeia. These different eruptions have all happened at considerable distances of time from each other. This appears by the layers of good soil which are found between them. But the matter which immediately covers the town, and with which the theatre, and all the houses hitherto examined, were found filled, is not lava, but a sort of soft stone, composed of pumice and ashes, intermixed with earth. This has saved the pictures, manuscripts, busts, utensils, and other antiquities, which have been recovered out of Herculaneum, from utter destruction. For if any of the six succeeding eruptions 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 inseparable, from it. The eruption, which buried the city in cinders, earth, and ashes, has in some measure preserved it from the more destructive effects of the fiery torrents which have overwhelmed it since.