National Museum At Naples Italy

The traveler whose attention is directed to the treasures of the National Museum at Naples, to the relics of antiquity scattered throughout Southern Italy and Sicily, and who, possibly setting foot on the soil of Attica, finds himself, If favored by fortune, in the presence of her glorious ruins — has in all probability had his appetite whetted in Rome, and has there collected such data as he will readily apply to all that presents itself as new to his observation.

But even he who turns himself at once to the contemplation of a heritage of antiquity such as that comprised in the favoured regions of Campania and Sicily has the promise of a rich and abundant harvest, if he but know how to prize its fruits.

The National Museum partakes in many of its departments of the same character as the Vatican with its statue-world, and includes many works in marble which have indeed been brought thither from Rome, notably those formerly belonging to the Farnese family.

By the careful observer many of the statues will be recognized as repetitions of those already seen in Rome.

They belong to the numerous class of copies made from renowned masterpieces, which in the old Roman time were indispensable adjuncts to a display of wealth and refinement. Many of these marbles betray, owing to a certain redundancy and pliancy of outline, a taste peculiar to the people of these coasts upon which Nature has lavished her choicest gifts.

The exquisite Greek coins remind us that we are in a land that was once the thriving and envied seat of Greek culture.

Innumerable tripods, candelabra, lamps, braziers, jars, jugs, caskets, bracelets, needles, house and kitchen-utensils of all kinds, weapons of warriors and gladiators, the numerous figures in bronze, above all a stately array of some hundreds of wall-paintings, unique in the world, indicate with sufficient clearness that here are collected the results of excavations which present as in a mirror a complete and charming picture of ancient life, and that we are in the immediate neighborhood of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabias, long buried at the foot of Vesuvius.