The Portland daily press., 1886-06-09
OUR FOREIGN LETTER.
Especial correspondence of the PREss.l

Especial correspondence of the PRESS
NAPLES.
We intended to make desperate assault
upon Rome, to circumvent her walls and
fathom the wonders of her excavations that
in future we might talk very learnedly upon
ancient art; but after quaking with the cold
all day Sunday, we resolved to move south
ward, until we were once warmed to the
marrow bone. Our friends in London ex-
pressed great solictude about our visiting
Italy at this season, for fear we should fall
victims to cholera or malarious fevers; but
for our part, we think the climate of Italy
has been greatly maligned, and in our Sec
ond European tour we shall set apart Italy
for the months of May and June; by that
time nature puts on her holiday suit which
would contrast well with the gray old ruins,
while early in the season leafiess trees and
fruitless vineslg give cold neutral tint to the
whole landscape.
Approaching Naples after dark we caught
our first glimpse of Vesuvius from the car
window. 1t failed to reach our ideal, as it
appeared only bright spot in the darkness,
like the light from an open furnace, from
which streamed two lines of fire in the form
of a letter V. Afterwards, as we watched it
day by day, we were much more impressed
withits grandeur. 1t is strange that it looms
up more beautifully as pillar of cloud in the
MONDAY sun, than as a flaming torch in the
blackness of night
We began Naples at the Museum, partly to
avoid the confusion of Carnival week in the
streets, and also to become familiar with the
decorations and accessories of Pompeii be-
fore we visited the desolate city, that we
might more readily, in imagination, people
its silent streets and refurnish its deserted
homes. A long list of the treasures of this
wonderful museum would be very prosy and
superfluous as the most accurate knowledge
of everything that pertained to Pompeiian
life has been widely diffused, both by books
and reproductions of the forms in our do
nestle and fine arts. Many of these are so
familiar in our household embellishments
that we do not call them rare, or think to
ask from what the designs were taken.
Many pieces of statuary in this collection be-
longed originally to the Farnese family and
are to-day the models in the art of sculpture.
We venture to state that thousands of valua-
BILE relics have been preserved from the
property of this one family. If we take the
value, even if the cost of labor was much
less in ancient times than to-day, of one such
figure as Hercules, or the group of ThesBind-
ing of the Drusa to the Horns of the Bull,
as scale on which to estimate their wealth,
it must lave equalled the fabulous gold of
Cr9sus. Could some Of these speeches. fig
ures recite their own biographies, they would
tell many thrilling tales of the scenes they
had witnessed in Athenian halls, where
schemes were plotted which overthrow the
thrones Of the world. Many were carried
from thence to Rome, and some to Pompeii
and Herculaneum, where they shared with
their owners the doom of a long entomb-
ment.
We are bewildered in thinking of the
throngs Of people who have, in their turn,
stood before these statues and paintings, dis
cussing their merits, just as we did that day,
and of the artists whose reputation rose or
fell by a single word from the fiattering lips,
or by a censuring sheer of their lordly pat
rons. All these hosts have passed out of
human ken, but some of this work in marble
is as fresh to-day as if the last touch of the
chisel was given just as yesterdays sun went
down, and bids fair to outlive many more
shifting dynasties. There is great hue and
cry among the worshippers of antiquities and
of the effete institutions of the old world, no