Her Ladyship had been true to her word in getting a royal order for excavators, who turned up to an innumerable extent, and their director. And there was, of course, our escort: we had rendezvoused at the Palace because of the necessity of taking a patrol of cavalry to protect us from annoyance by the sympathisers of the French party. No sooner were we dismounted, than Mr. Comyn felt it his duty to improve the occasion. He began on the vicissitudes of earthly grandeur: this very dwelling of the Neapolitan veteran was once tenanted by a maniple of those legionaries whose irresistible valour had subdued all our hemisphere from the Tyne to the swampy banks of the Nile, from the pillars of Hercules to the shores of India. "Bravo, Comyn!" roared the Admiral, whom the Queen encouraged to treat her as a friend rather than a sovereign: "what a rare _auspex_, is it you call it? No, _augur_, you make. Why, since the fortunate event of the 1st of August every one of these four points at this moment acknowledges British sway; and not only the sea between them, but every accessible corner, and the liquid part of the whole globe, from Nootka Sound to Bass's Straits, is directed from half a dozen valves in Charing Cross. But a truce to national bragging, which I detest as much as individual self-praise! It will only do by way of a claptrap at the end of a dry stage-speech, well and significantly bawled up to the forum or the galleries. No more of it in this place: let us begin the sober narrative of facts." "Oh Lud!" said her Ladyship, "is it so bad as that? Your Majesty, may the excavators cast about and find a good place to begin, that we may have something to see while our ears are being tickled? A golden statue let it be; not the same gold as the statue of Minerva, whose head the peasant split open with a hoe." In the face of her Ladyship's protests the excavators were marched off to a place out of sight; the plain reason being that the part all round where we were was already excavated down to its original level. The quadrangular court which we first entered into might be as large as the railed part of Leicester Square. It was surrounded on all sides by a colonnade supporting the roof of a gallery, and from the gallery you entered a number of small apartments not unlike the cells of a prison, or, to use an affirmative comparison, greatly resembling the galleries round some of our old inns, with the rooms adjoining. Only in the present instance the corridor was on the ground floor, there being no upper storey. "This building, sir," said Mr. Comyn, after a lame parley with the one-armed soldier, "was first taken for a gymnasium, afterwards for a prison, and by some for a school of gladiators; at present it is declared to have been a barrack for soldiers, because various pieces of armour were found in some of the cells. The little apartments are highly interesting. Many have their walls covered with inscriptions and curious drawings."