"The towns of Portici and Resinia, which are in fact united, are very populous. The shops, at the season of my visit, Christmas, particularly those where eatables were sold, exhibited a very gay appearance; and gilt hams, gilt cheese, festoons of gilt sausages, intermixed with evergreens, and fringes of maccaroni, illuminated Virgin Marys, and gingerbread Holy Families, divided the attention of the stranger, with the motley crowds in all the gay variety of Neapolitan costume. At the depth of seventy or eighty feet beneath these crowded haunts of busy men, lies buried, in a solid mass of hard volcanic matter, the once splendid city of Herculaneum, which was overthrown in the first century of the Christian era, by a terrible eruption of Vesuvius. It was discovered about the commencement of the last century, by the digging of a well immediately over the theatre. For many years the excavations were carried on with spirit; and the forum, theatres, porticos, and splendid mansions, were successively exposed, and a great number of the finest bronzes, marble statues, busts, &c., which now delight the visitor to the Museum at Naples, were among the fruits of these labors. Unfortunately, the parts excavated, upon the removal of the objects of art discovered, were immediately filled up in lieu of pillars, or supports to the superincumbent mass being erected. As the work of disentombment had long since ceased, nothing remained to be seen but part of the theatre, the descent to which is by a staircase made for the purpose. By the light of a torch, carried by the _custode_, I saw the orchestra, proscenium, consular seats, as well as part of the corridors, all stripped, however, of the marbles and paintings which once adorned them. I was shewn the spot where the celebrated manuscripts were found. The reflection that this theatre had held its ten thousand spectators, and that it then lay, with the city of which it was an ornament, so horribly engulphed, gave rise to feelings in awful contrast to those excited by the elysium of Portici almost immediately above. About seven miles further along the base of the mountain, lies the long lost city of Pompeii. The road passes through, or rather over Torre del Greco, a town almost totally destroyed by the eruption in 1794. The whole surface of the country for some distance is laid waste by the river of lava, which flowed in a stream or body, of twenty feet in depth, destroyed in its course vineyards, cottages, and everything combustible, consumed and nearly overwhelmed the town, and at last poured into the sea, where as it cooled, it formed a rugged termination or promontory of considerable height. The surface of this mass presented a rocky and sterile aspect, strongly opposed to the exuberance of vegetation in the more fortunate neighborhood. Passing through Torre del Annunziata, a populous village, the street of which was literally lined with maccaroni hanging to dry, I soon reached Pompeii.