Happily, the Italian Government established by the revolution of 1860,
came into power to set all these acts of negligence and roguery to
rights. Signor Fiorelli, who is all intelligence and activity, not to
mention his erudition, which numerous writings prove, was appointed
inspector of the excavations. Under his administration, the works which
had been vigorously resumed were pushed on by as many as seven hundred
laborers at a time, and they dug out in the lapse of three years more
treasures than had been brought to light in the thirty that preceded
them. Everything has been reformed, nay, _moralised_, as it were, in the
dead city; the visitor pays two francs at the gate and no longer has to
contend with the horde of guides, doorkeepers, rapscallions, and beggars
who formerly plundered him. A small museum, recently established,
furnishes the active inquirer the opportunity of examining upon the spot
the curiosities that have already been discovered; a library containing
the fine works of Mazois, of Raoul Rochette, of Gell, of Zahn, of
Overbeck, of Breton, etc., on Pompeii, enables the student to consult
them in Pompeii itself; workshops lately opened are continually busy in
restoring cracked walls, marbles, and bronzes, and one may there
surprise the artist Bramante, the most ingenious hand at repairing
antiquities in the world, as likewise my friend, Padiglione, who, with
admirable patience and minute fidelity, is cutting a small model in cork
of the ruins that have been cleared, which is scrupulously exact. In
fine--and this is the main point--the excavations are no longer carried
on occasionally only, and in the presence of a few privileged persons,
but before the first comer and every day, unless funds have run short.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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