Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/270

220 from the interior, to the government of his Majesty, the late king, suggesting the importance, of having an accurate line of levelling run through to Naples, from the sill of the front door of St. Peter's, at Rome, which may be presumed at present as the best, if not an invariable datum point, and the difference of level marked upon bench marks at and around Naples. (See Appendix No. 4.) The work could be performed with ease and little cost by the officers of the "Ponte e Strade," going along the high road between the capitals. I regret to say, however, that it was intimated to me, at the Ministry of the Interior, that this despotic government objected to entertain suggestions from foreigners, even as to matters of science; and the work, which could then have been accomplished with facility, in connection with certain railway surveys in progress, remains, and is likely to remain unperformed.

While the limits of error as to levels deduced from the sea, affect all minute questions of rise and fall of Serapis, they do not touch the great change of level, as evidenced by the celebrated columns; but they appear to me sufficient to destroy the force of the conclusions of Niccolini and others, as to oscillatory changes of level of small extent.

The evidence of elevation, of the whole building since its original construction appears to me irrefragable; but not so that upon which the supposition of its subsidence first, after its erection, and previous to its elevation are based. The argument for subsidence, rests upon the improbability that the level of the floor of the building was originally designed and constructed, below that of the mean tide of the Mediterranean. Now it appears to me that the probability runs just the other way. Archæologists appear to