animates this people to infurrection, but fome very preffing and very univerfal cause; fuch as a scarcity of bread: every other grievance they bear as if it were their charter. When we confider thirty thousand human creatures without beds or habitations, wandering almoft naked in fearch of food through the streets of a well-built city; when we think of the opportunities they have of being together, of comparing their own deftitute fituation with the affluence of others, one cannot help being aftonished at their patience.

Let the prince be diftinguished by fplendour and magnificence; let the great and the rich have their luxuries; but, in the name of humanity, let the poor, who are willing to labour, have food in abundance to fatisfy the cravings of nature, and raiment to defend them from the inclemencies of the weather!

If their governors, whether from weakness or neglect, do not supply them with thefe, they certainly have a right to help themselves. Every law of equity and common fense will justify them in revolting against such governors, and in fatisfying their own wants from the fuperfluities of lazy luxury.

LETTER LIX.

Naples.

I

HAVE made feveral vifits to the mu feum at Portici, principally, as you may believe, to view the antiquities dug out of Herculaneum and Pompeia. The work publishing by Government, ornamented with engravings of the chief articles of this curious collection, will, in all probability, be continued for many years, as new articles, worthy of the fculptor's art, are daily difcovered, and as a vaft mine of curiofities is fuppofed to be concealed in the unopened streets of Pompeia. Among the ancient paintings, those which ornamented the theatre of Herculaneum are more elegant than any that have hitherto been found at Pompeia. All thofe paintings were executed upon the ftucco which lined the

walls;

walls; they have been fawed off with great labour and addrefs, and are now preferved in glass cases; the colours, we are told, were much brighter before they were drawn out of their fubterraneous abode, and expofed to the open air; they are, however, ftill wonderfully lively: the subjects are understood at the first glance by those who are acquainted with the Grecian history and mythology. There is a Chiron teaching Achilles to play on the lyre, Ariadne deferted, the Judgment of Paris, fome Bacchantes and Fauns; the largest piece reprefents Thefeus's victory over the Minotaur. It confifts of seven or eight figures very well grouped, but a Frieze, with a dancing woman, on a black ground, not above ten inches long, is thought the best.

We ought not, however, to judge of the progress which the ancients had made in the art of painting, by the degree of perfection which appears in those pictures.

It is not probable that the beft paintings of ancient Greece or Italy were at Herculaneum; and, if it could be ascertained that fome of the productions of the best masters were there, it would not follow that thofe which have been discovered are of that clafs. If a ftranger were to enter at random a few houses in London, and see some tolerably good pictures there, he could not with propriety conclude that the best of them were the very beft in London. The paintings brought from Herculaneum are perfect proofs that the ancients had made that progrefs in the art, which thofe pictures indicate; but do not form even a prefumption, that they had not made a much greater. It is almoft demonftrable that these paintings are not of their best, The fame school which formed the fculptor to correctnefs, would form the painter to equal correctnefs in his drawings, however deficient he might be in all the other parts of his art. Their beft ftatues are

correct in their proportions, and elegant