A Report upon the Herculaneum Manuscripts

letter addressed to your Royal Highness, as the great and illustrious patron of the undertaking. Since my return, that letter has, with the same gracious permission, been reprinted in order to correct some errors which a lack of local, as well as accurate, information had unavoidably occasioned.

But of infinitely more consequence is the advantage which I now enjoy of addressing to your Royal Highness, in this letter, a faithful and detailed account of every circumstance, transaction, and occurrence connected with the nature, the commencement, the prosecution, and the result of the undertaking—the successful, or at least very promising, course of which was interrupted, most unfortunately, in the year 1806, by the French invasion of the Neapolitan territory. Hence it will clearly appear, I most confidently trust, that, notwithstanding that invasion, notwithstanding