There is a little jeu d’esprit of Voltaire’s “La Toilette de Madame de Pompadour,” in which he wittily exalts the moderns above the ancients, and ridicules their ignorance of the luxuries and comforts of life:  but Voltaire had not seen the museum of Portici.  We can add few distinct articles to the list of comforts and luxuries it contains:  though it must be confessed that we have improved upon them, and varied them ad infinitum.  In those departments of the mechanics which are in any way connected with the fine arts, the ancients appear to have attained perfection.  To them belongs the invention of all that embellishes life, of all the graceful forms of imitative art, varied with such exquisite taste, such boundless fertility of fancy, that nothing is left to us but to refine upon their ideas, and copy their creations.  With all our new invented machines, and engines, we can do little more than what the ancients performed without them.

I ought not to forget one room containing some objects, more curious and amusing than beautiful, principally from Pompeii, such as loaves of bread, reduced to a black cinder, figs in the same state, grain of different kinds, colours from a painter’s room, ear-rings and bracelets, gems, specimens of mosaic, etc. etc.

* * * * *

March 7.—­Frattinto brought me to-day the last numbers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews:  a great treat so far from home.  Both contain some clever essays:  among them, an article on prisons, in the Edinburgh, interested me most.

Methinks these two Reviews stalk through the literary world, like the two giants in Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore:  the one pounding, slaying, mangling, despoiling with blind fury, like the heavy orthodox club-armed Morgante; the other, like the sneering, witty, half-pagan, half-baptized Margutte, slashing and cutting, and piercing through thick and thin; a tort et a travers.  Truly the simile is more a-propos than I thought when it first occurred to me.

I went the other day to a circulating library and reading-room kept here by a little cross French-woman, and asked to see a catalogue.  She showed me, first, a list of all the books, Italian, French, and English, she was allowed to keep and sell:  it was a thin pamphlet of about one hundred pages.  She then showed me the catalogue of prohibited books, which was at least as thick as a good sized octavo.  The book to which I wished to refer, was the second volume of Robertson’s Charles the Fifth.  After some hesitation, Madame P** led me into a back room; and opening a sliding pannel, discovered a shelf let into the wall, on which were arranged a number of authors, chiefly English and French.  I was not surprised to find Rousseau and Voltaire among them; but am still at a loss to guess what Robertson has done or written to entitle him to a place in such select company.