The ancient pictures of Herculaneum[276] are of the utmost interest; not only from the freshness and colour, but from the nature of the subjects they represent. All are executed in fresco; they are exclusively on the walls, and generally on a black or red ground. Some are of animated beings large as life; but the majority are in miniature. Every different subject of antiquity is depicted here; deities, human figures, animals, landscapes, foreign and domestic, and a variety of grotesque beings; sports and pastimes, theatrical performances, sacrifices, all enter the catalogue. In regard to the statues found[277], some are colossal, some of the natural size, and some in miniature; and the materials of their formation are either clay, marble, or bronze. They represent all different objects, divinities, heroes, or distinguished persons; and in the same substances, especially bronze, there are the figures of many animals. It is not probable that the best paintings of ancient Greece and Italy[278] were deposited in Herculaneum or Pompeii, which were towns of the second order, and unlikely to possess the master-pieces of the chief artists, which were usually destined to adorn the more celebrated temples or the palaces of kings and emperors. Their best statues are correct in their proportions, and elegant in their forms; but their paintings are not correct in their proportions, and are, comparatively, inelegant in their forms. A few rare medals also have been found among these ruins, the most curious of which is a gold medallion of Augustus, struck in Sicily in the fifteenth year of his reign. Nor must we omit one of the greatest curiosities, preserved at Portici[279]. This consists of a cement of cinders, which in one of the eruptions of Vesuvius surprised a woman, and totally enveloped her. This cement, compressed and hardened by time around her body, has become a complete mould of it, and in the pieces here preserved, we see a perfect impression of the different parts to which it adhered. One represents half a bosom, which is of exquisite beauty; another a shoulder, a third a portion of her shape, and all concur in revealing to us that this woman was young; that she was tall and well made, and even that she had escaped in her chemise, for some of the linen was still adhering to the ashes. Though the city was destroyed[280] in the manner we have related, remarkably few skeletons have been found, though many were discovered in the streets of Pompeii; but one appears under the threshold of a door with a bag of money in his hand, as if in the attitude of escaping, leaving its impression in the surrounding volcanic matter. These and other valuable antiquities are preserved in the museum at Portici, which occupies the site of ancient Herculaneum, and in the Museo Borbonico at Naples. For details in respect to which, we must refer to the numerous books that have described them.