After leaving Portici, the road is not good, but we pass through Torre del Greco and Torre dell’ Annunziata, in our way to Pompei. The former place is intersected by the streams of lava which have so often destroyed it. They present a tolerably even surface on the whole extent, but excessively rough and broken in the detail, which you see when you are on it, but at a little distance the eye passes over these inequalities, and the whole has the appearance of a field of rich soil, cross ploughed, with the clods unbroken, and still perfectly naked. The tower of the principal church is half buried, and in two or three other churches the ancient doorway has been filled up, and the present entrance is by a descending flight of steps, through what was originally the large front window. Torre dell’ Annunziata is famous for its manufacture of maccaroni. Pompei lies quite beyond Vesuvius, and recollecting its catastrophe, we are surprised at its distance from the mountain. We are not suffered (unless a permission to draw have been previously obtained) to go about without a guide, and these take you in regular succession to the soldiers’ quarters, the theatres, the amphitheatre, the forum, with its surrounding temples and public buildings, to several private houses, to the street of the tombs, and the villa of Marcus Arrius Diomed. The whole having been covered with earth, many of the walls look as if they were new. We see almost everywhere ancient columns of stone covered by later work in stucco; the first design and execution being much superior to the more recent; a circumstance not to have been expected, as the eruption which destroyed the city took place in the reign of Titus, when the fine arts are usually supposed to have been in a state of high perfection. An earthquake had considerably damaged the city sixteen years before the fatal eruption which overwhelmed it, and we still readily trace the half finished restorations. This helps us in many cases to a precise date, which we could not otherwise have obtained. The names of the inhabitants remain written on the walls just by the door, but where the termination is observed, it is always in the accusative case, a circumstance which has puzzled the antiquaries. The profession is judged from the indications observed within. In one house surgeon’s instruments were discovered, and it is remarkable, that the room where these were found, has a large window open to the sky, and not under a portico, which is the case with almost all the other openings in the interior of the houses at Pompei: in another, wine-jars, still tinged with the fur of the wine; in another, cups, and marks of these having been placed wet on the marble-covered counter, has given occasion to believe that the place was one where hot liquors were sold, something in the nature of a modern coffee-house; in another was the iron-work of a carriage, with the impression of the wood on the earth, and sometimes bits of charcoal.