Herculaneum as it lies to-day, awaiting its turn for excavation, creates in one respect an impression which Pompeii excites in a far less degree. It retains the visible aspect of a buried city. The sense of overwhelming tragedy is never lost. Pompeii stands free and open under the clear sky; so large, so perfect, that in the fascination of its archæology one is somewhat led away from the disaster. It is a deserted city. One knows what it was that drove the people out, but it is easy to forget. Perhaps one cares more to gloat over the rich old life laid bare so freely than to burden one's mind with memory of that day when the glow of August sunshine turned to darkness "as of a room shut up," and death came down from the mountain into the crowded streets. At Herculaneum the mere fragment of a street, the few half-buried houses, the pit in which they lie, the cavernous darkness which hides the amphitheatre, stimulate the imagination till it leaps to a sudden comprehension of what it was that happened on that day of woe. One passes from the dirty street of Resina into a building of no dignity, somewhat like the entrance to the public baths of some small English town. A guide appears and guides one down a flight of steps which are at first palpably modern. But ere long the tread changes. One is on an ancient stair, and almost immediately the guide pauses in a vaulted corridor running right and left through perfect darkness. The height is hardly more than permits a tall man to walk upright. Here and there an arched opening in the corridor goes one sees not whither. Passing under such an arch one may descend four steps, beyond which rises another wall. That wall is tufa; it is no part of the structure. It flowed or fell here when it was half liquid; it came out from Vesuvius, and it is what overwhelmed the city. The steps, thus interrupted by the intrusion of what are now stone walls, are the upper tier of seats in the amphitheatre. A gleam of daylight breaks the darkness: it comes from the Prince d'Elboeuf's shaft, which pierces the stone steps and goes down far below them. One looks up the tubular wet boring and then plunges forward to the bottom of the theatre through blackness barely scattered by the candles which the guide carries.