of a Museum as rich and interesting as any
in the known world.

As one stands in the vestibule or entrance-
hall, the first room to the right contains the
paintings found in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
At the first coup d'Å“il it is not unfrequently
the case that the visitor looks disappointed:
these works of art do not come up to the
expectations that he had formed of them.
He recognises the superiority of ancient over
modern sculpture. A cast from the "Laocoon,"
or "The Dancing Faun," or "Mercury in
repose," strikes even his uncritical eye with
admiration. He requires no artist to be at
hand to point out their beauties. The case is
not the same with these paintings. One is apt
to imagine that in perspective, in delicacy of
touch, in the composition of the principal
figures, and in many other points, they are
vastly inferior to the works of Trafalgar
Square. At least, I can only whisper (for such
an heretical opinion could never be conveyed
in any other tone) that I am almost of that
way of thinking.

There are one or two paintings here, however,
which may excite curiosity, even though they
do not awaken admiration. Such is the
picture of a parrot in harness, drawing a chariot
and driven by a grasshopper. This is
supposed to be a caricature of the Emperor
Nero, guided by his preceptor, the
philosopher Seneca. The spirit of caricature is
still further illustrated in a painting of
Æneas, Anchises, and Ascanius, who are
represented with the heads of dogs. These
heads have a certain air of intelligence and
waggery about them, which would not do
discredit to some of the French artists of the
present day. Not far off is a copy—an ancient
copy, be it understood—of one of the most
celebrated works of olden times. It represents the
death of Iphigenia, sacrificed by her father—as
your school recollections may inform you—to
appease the gods, and enable the Greek fleet
to leave Aulis, where they were detained by
contrary winds. The figures have all the
stiffness peculiar to our own Pre-Raphaelite
school ; but Agamemnon, the father, is
conceived in a happy spirit. We are not suffered
to see his face, which he is represented as
covering with his cloak, so that the
expression which it must wear at such a moment
is left to the imagination. It is interesting
to be told by an ancient writer with regard
to this very picture, that the painter having
tried successively the various shades of grief,
agony, and despair, which he was capable of
giving to the features, at length hit upon this
happy expedient of veiling them altogether,
which appears to me to add tenfold to the
force and effectiveness of the scene. Not far
off is a work of a very different class. The
scene represented is the interior of a school,
and the moment selected is that when a
truant schoolboy is undergoing the punishment
of being "horsed." Although it was
painted, like the others, several thousand
years ago, you might fancy you saw before
you the inside of Laburnum House Academy,
Peckham. Hoisted upon the back of one of his
comrades, in precisely the same manner as I
believe the time-honoured custom still obtains
among the moderns, the offender is subjected
to the strokes of the birch. The personage
officiating appears not to be the schoolmaster-
—and herein I think I notice an improvement
on the plan adopted at some of our public
schools—but some other functionary, the footman,
most probably, or the porter. As for
the schoolmaster himself, he is amongst his
scholars at the other end of the room,
"improving the occasion," and calling their
attention to the results of idleness. They,
poor little creatures, seem to be sitting for
the most part with their eyes fixed on the
ground, as if not daring to contemplate the
dreadful little drama.

A row of thirteen small pictures, executed
with the delicacy of miniatures, forms the
celebrated series, "The Dancing Girls of Pompeii."
Striking the lyre, clashing the cymbals, in
every attitude of graceful elegance and
abandon, it must be confessed that these
figures, when closely examined, convey a high
idea of the art of painting as practised by the
ancients. You perceive in these young ladies
no resemblance to our modern ballet-girls.
So far from being arrayed in the short muslin
dress and closely-fitting tights which draw
down our applause at the Opera, they are
enveloped in a vast amount of loose drapery,
which, though it adds to the grace of the out-
line in the pictures, must have sadly encumbered
their movements in the dance. The fact
is that the Terpsichorean art neither stood in
the same position nor was practised in the
same manner among the Romans as among
ourselves. There were war-dances, and
national dances, and—what may seem strange
to every one but a classical scholar or a
"Jumper"—religious dances; whatever kinds
of dancing took place independently of these,
and for the amusement of an audience, were
usually carried on at the entertainments of
the great.

But if we were really together in the
Museum, and were to stand chatting at this rate
before each picture, we should never get on.
The question is, where to look, and in what
direction to go? Here are subjects of almost
every kind to engage our attention; subjects
of what may be termed "High Art," taken
from the Iliad—the Trojan horse, the last
interview of Achilles and Briseis (by-the-bye,
what a beautiful head that is of Briseis! it
reminds one of the face of one of Etty's
nymphs); subjects selected from mythology,
and bringing before us our old and valued
friends the gods and goddesses—Bacchus and
Silenus, Hylas carried off by the Nymphs,
Medea meditating the murder of her children.
Then there are subjects drawn from domestic
life, of the Wilkie and Mulready school—the
Toilet of a Young Girl ; a Family Concert; a