Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-26
IrreVerent Enterprise.

The Explorations of Classic tc'Antfquities- The Possible Revenge of Vesuvius.
 The London Standard, in article on the
 Mount Vesuyius railway, says: Ut is the
 scene of this awful darkness and destruction
 that tho pioneers of material progress have
 now invaded with tramway, if it were Hoondsditch or Bayswater. The world re-
 mains, no doubt, but the gods apparently
 have been destroyed and no reverence Is left
 for the place haunted by their shades. There
 is genius loci in all spots endeared to his imagination by great or dreadful historic in cidents. and one might have hoped that the march of events and the logic of facts would spare the bare hnggard breast of Vesu-
 vius from peculiarly vulgar intrusion. Here
 in England we have bill for the protection
 of ancient monuments. Would 1t not be
 possible in Italy to pass a law protecting
 from dissertation ancient sites and classic
 haunts? Or are we to have railway to the
 Elysian Fields; will Vergil's tomb be n halt
 ing place for a locomotive to take ill water,
 and will an aquarium be opened at Baie
 Unhappily, 1t is not the Italians who would
 hinder or check the consummatlon of such
 enormities. Always practical, and too often
 a material, people, they are animated by no
 overawing sentiment for the sacred places
 with which their country abounds. They have peculiar admiration and an exception al aptituds for modern commerce. As the French say, they exploiter their remains and curiosities; and to them it is the most natu- ral think in the world to tram Yesuvius.
 Indeed, they are particularly proud of the ex- ploit, considering that it is one more proof of the capacity of Italy to cut good figure in the race of material progress.
 And now that the tramway runs up the scared back of Monte Somma, there must needs be trans to run at night, and the cleo tric light to show the way. It used to be one of the fantastic tricks of certain tourists 4o1 1n1ya k1a Echta cd hry RnT1cra lights, and, for anything we know, this per formance may have become quite common. The baths of Caracalla were occasionally treated in the same fashion, gaping idlers chattered while the owls flew out of the Ivy covered masonry. Such a spectacle may yield momentary and shallow delight to the thoughtless, but no one to whom antiquity is truly venerable can take diversion i'll these untimely and unseemly peep-shows. And now the turn of Vesuvius has come. The cone that vomited flame, ashes, scoriae and lava, and doomed beautiful cities to destruc- tion, is to be bedizened like Vauxhall or Gre morne and to be really 'butchered' to make the tourists holiday. Is 1t impossible to travel to one of the fairest spots on earth without having recourse to these violent but yapid in centives to excitement? A quiet row round the island of Capri, a morning s stroll on the thymy slopes of Isehia, is surely worth all the artificial apparatus of modern amusement. How one can stand on the steps of the disin- tered theatre at Pompeii, and then either as- cend Vesuvius in tram, or visit the cone by electric light, 1t is difficult to understand. Is it not better to drive to the lonely little tenn p1e at Paestum, to walk along the winding sea-road that connects Castellemare with Sor- rento, and sit summing ones self in one of the orange groves of this last lovely haven of peace while the air burns? {? And when these charms are exhausted, and the journey from Amalf to Salerno has been added to the list, there is still haunted ground to traverse on the other side of Naples, with Vergn an guide. But before visiting such a city and it's surroundings people ought to be impregnated with the spirit of literary and romantic tradition that belongs to them. No body then would dream of vulgarizing such spots with alien and superfuous modern con- veniences. Who knows The outraged may yet resent the intrusion. Even in it's ashes live their wonted fire light may again break forth from its cone outshin- ing mans puny appliances, and burying the pigmy handiwork of the nineteenthscentury as easily and under the same grave as that in which it buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.