fate of a petty city that ere long disappeared beneath vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and under a thick growth of woodland—­remark this latter circumstance—­until, at length, centuries accumulated, and with them the forgetfulness that buries all things.  Pompeii was then, so to speak, lost, and the few learned men who knew it by name could not point out its site.  When, at the close of the sixteenth century, the architect Fontana was constructing a subterranean canal to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell’ Annunziata, the conduit passed through Pompeii, from one end to the other, piercing the walls, following the old streets, and coming upon sub structures and inscriptions; but no one bethought him that they had discovered the place of the buried city.  However, the amphitheatre, which, roofed in by a layer of the soil, formed a regular excavation, indicated an ancient edifice, and the neighboring peasantry, with better information than the learned, designated by the half-Latin name of Civita, which dim tradition had handed down, the soil and debris that had accumulated above Pompeii.

It was only in 1748, under the reign of Charles III, when the discovery of Herculaneum had attracted the attention of the world to the antiquities thus buried, that, some vine-dressers having struck upon some old walls with their picks and spades, and in so doing unearthed statues, a colonel of engineers named Don Rocco Alcubierra asked permission of the king to make excavations in the vicinity.  The king consented and placed a dozen of galley-slaves at the colonel’s disposition.  Thus it was that by a lucky chance a military engineer discovered the city that we are about to visit.  Still, eight years more had to roll away before any one suspected that it was Pompeii which they were thus exhuming.  Learned folks thought they were dealing with Stabiae.

Shall I relate the history of these underground researches, “badly conducted, frequently abandoned, and resumed in obedience to the same capriciousness that had led to their suspension,” as they were?  Such are the words of the opinion Barthelemy expressed when writing, in 1755, to the Count de Caylus.  Winkelmann, who was present at these excavations a few years later, sharply criticised the tardiness of the galley-slaves to whom the work had been confided.  “At this rate,” he wrote, “our descendants of the fourth generation will still have digging to do among these ruins.”  The illustrious German hardly suspected that he was making so accurate a prediction as it has turned out to be.  The descendants of the fourth generation are our contemporaries, and the third part of Pompeii is not yet unearthed.