The Emperor Joseph II. visited the excavations on the 6th of April, 1796, and complained bitterly to King Ferdinand IV. of the slight degree of zeal and the small amount of money employed.  The king promised to do better, but did not keep his word.  He had neither intelligence nor activity in prosecuting this immense task, excepting while the French occupation lasted.  At that time, however, the government carried out the idea of Francesco La Vega, a man of sense and capacity, and purchased all the ground that covered Pompeii.  Queen Caroline, the sister of Bonaparte and wife of Murat, took a fancy to these excavations and pushed them vigorously, often going all the way from Naples through six leagues of dust to visit them.  In 1813 there were exactly four hundred and seventy-six laborers employed at Pompeii.  The Bourbons returned and commenced by re-selling the ground that had been purchased under Murat; then, little by little, the work continued, at first with some activity, then fell off and slackened more and more until, from being neglected, they were altogether abandoned, and were resumed only once in a while in the presence of crowned heads.  On these occasions they were got up like New Year’s surprise games:  everything that happened to be at hand was scattered about on layers of ashes and of pumice-stone and carefully covered over.  Then, upon the arrival of such-and-such a majesty, or this or that highness, the magic wand of the superintendent or inspector of the works, caused all these treasures to spring out of the ground.  I could name, one after the other, the august personages who were deceived in this manner, beginning with the Kings of the Two Sicilies and of Jerusalem.

But that is not all.  Not only was nothing more discovered at Pompeii, but even the monuments that had been found were not preserved.  King Ferdinand soon discovered that the 25,000 francs applied to the excavations were badly employed; he reduced the sum to 10,000, and that amount was worn down on the way by passing through so many hands.  Pompeii fell back, gradually presenting nothing but ruins upon ruins.

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