It would be possible to render Pompeii immeasurably more interesting than it is at present, by roofing a few of the houses; or by covering them with arches, and using them as places in which to exhibit the different articles found there, and which are now assembled in the Studio at Naples. Perhaps one of the buildings might be nearly furnished in such a manner. I think, as things now are, the ruins lose in interest by the absence of these articles, and the articles by the absence of the ruins. There would be a certain inconvenience in this arrangement, it is true, but I think it would be more than compensated for, by the intensity of the interest that would be created, to say nothing of the greater distinctness that would be afforded to our ideas of the ancient domestic economy. Pompeii once stood on a low promontory, and was a port, but the land has made in a way to throw the sea back, fully a mile. Through this low bottom the Sarno now flows into the bay. In the present state of the entrance of the river, no vessel could approach the town, it being difficult to get a common boat into it when there is any wind. A portion of this stream was led through the town and the water still flows in the artificial channel beneath the houses and temples! Our guide went through the usual routine tolerably well, but he had obtained a droll jumble of languages from the different strangers who frequent the place. With _him_ the conversation was principally in Italian and French, while among ourselves we occasionally spoke English. Ambitious to show his knowledge, he called out to me, as I stepped into a building to examine it, with a strange confusion of grammar and tongues--“_Eh! Signore; celuilà sono tutti shops._” Returning from Pompeii, we stopped to visit Herculaneum. This place, in very many particulars, is of far greater interest than the other. It was much more important of itself, and, instead of being barely covered with ashes and cinders, it was indeed buried; the distance between the pit of the theatre that is opened, and the surface of the ground, being about seventy feet. Lava did the work here, and as every thing was covered while the rolling mass was in a state of fusion, the fiery fluid found its way into every crevice, cooling around them, so as to preserve the forms of the things it enveloped.