We descended into the theatre by a passage cut through the lava, and explored its neighbourhood by torchlight. The stage, proscenium, consular seats, orchestra, and lobbies, are open; and it was a curious sensation to wander through such places under such circumstances. The general appearance was that of a mine; but when the eye came to scrutinize the details, and to find that the place was once actually a populous city, which exists as near as possible in its ancient condition, embedded, filled, gorged with lava, a feeling of awe and of intense admiration comes over one. I think this place, out of all comparison, the most imposing sight of the two. Pompeii offers more to investigation, and more for the gratification of common curiosity; but there is a sublimity in the catastrophe of Herculaneum, a grandeur in its desolation, that have no parallel. One is like examining a mummy carelessly prepared, in which the mass has been so far preserved, it is true, as to show a general but a hideous likeness to humanity, while the other is opening one of those graves that, owing to some property of the soil, preserves the body with most of the peculiarities of the living man. The lava and the stone of the edifices are so intimately united, that one does not, at first, distinguish between them in those places where the separation has not been made; and I cannot describe the effect on the feelings, when it is suddenly ascertained that the hand is actually resting on a portion of a human structure. As the light descends by the large opening that was made around the well, the stage and pit of the theatre, with all its more principal parts, are sufficiently obvious. But even this excites a sensation different from any other ruin (the word is misapplied, for every thing is nearly as perfect as on the day when the catastrophe occurred) when the frightful interment is contemplated. Judge for yourself of the appearance of a large and even elegant structure, placed in the bosom of rocks, eighty feet beneath the surface, and of the crowd of associations that press upon the mind at contemplating such an object. Of the magnitude of the edifice you may form some notion by that of the proscenium, which is set down in the books at one hundred and thirty feet in length, the rest of the building being in proportion of course. It is said this theatre would hold ten thousand people, but the number strikes me as extravagant.--When it was first opened, everything that was not liable to be removed, or destroyed, by the motion and heat of the lava, was found as it stood at the moment of the disaster. Thus the stage had all its permanent decorations, though some were displaced and injured, such as bronzes, alabaster columns, &c. These fragments have been preserved in the museums. You know that the celebrated equestrian statues of the Balbi came from Herculaneum.