This operation has now been going on for years, with extraordinary zeal and patience. The Americans who travel in this country are a little too apt to deride the want of “energy” in the government, and a large class falls into the puerile mistake of fancying it patriotism to boast of what we could do under the same circumstances. Certainly, I shall not pretend to compare the benefits of any other political system, _as a whole_, with those of our own, nor do I object to throwing the truth into the teeth of those who ignorantly contemn every thing American; but we have our weak spots as well as our neighbours, and I very much question if any Congress could be found sufficiently imbued with a love of learning, or sufficiently alive to its benefits even to our own particular and besetting motive, gain, to persevere in voting funds, year after year, to carry on the investigations that are now making in Naples. Neither a love of the fine arts nor a love of learning has yet made sufficient progress in America to cause the nation to feel or to understand the importance of both on general civilization, without adverting to their influence on the happiness of man, the greatest object of all just institutions. We have too many omissions of our own to throw about us these sneers indiscriminately. The number of manuscripts that has been found in different places is said to exceed two or three thousand; though it is probable many are duplicates. The greater portion of them, too, are past decyphering; as would have been the case with all, had the ancients used no better paper than the moderns. England, it is true, might possibly resist an eruption; but as for France and America, and Germany, and Italy herself, the heat of the volcano, in an ordinary time, would almost destroy their cobweb fabrics, if exposed to it any where near the crater. The collection of familiar articles found in the ruins, and collected in the museum, is of great interest; but the publications concerning them are so minute, that a description by me is unnecessary. I was much struck with the beauty of the forms, and with the classical nature of the ornaments. Thus, the weights of steel-yards, and many other things of the most familiar uses, are in the shape of heads, most probably busts, and possibly commemorative of the distinguished men of the country.