The subject of the present article is not altogether a new one. In 1895 Professor Lanciani published in the Bullettino Comunale (165–192) an article (cited as L.) under the title of Picturae Antiquae Cryptarum Romanarum, in which he dealt with the results of his examination of the collections at Windsor and Eton and of the Corsini MS. (158, i. 5 : Inv. 130102 sqq.) in Rome.

In 1909 the late Prof. R. Engelmann published his Antike Bilder aus römischen Handschriften (cited as Eng.), with a full description of the contents of the Corsini MS. (cited as Cors.), of two codices in the Vatican (Capp. 284, 285) of a codex in the possession of Mr. St. Clair Baddeley (cited as Badd.) and of Caylus' Recueil de Peintures (edition of 1757); a large number of photographic reproductions are added.

The excavations carried on during the years 1884–1890 by the late Lord Savile (then Sir Savile Lumley) at Civita Lavinia in Latium, yielded a large number of objects which have never been fully described. In the reports published by the excavator a short account of the work is given, from which it is plain that the two chief sites excavated were the ‘Royal Villa’ and the Temple of Juno Lavinia. A description and a few illustrations are there published of objects from both these sites, but nothing in the nature of a complete catalogue exists, and the purpose of this paper is merely to supply a first instalment of such a catalogue. I hope to complete the work in one or two subsequent volumes of these Papers.

English travellers in the days of the Tudors who have left behind them the story of their wanderings in the civilised lands of Europe are so few that perhaps little excuse is needed for the publication of a diary kept for Sir Edward Unton.

Unton was a gentleman of Berkshire, and traced his pedigree to Edward IV.'s time. He married in 1555 a widowed daughter of the Protector Somerset, was knighted by the Queen in 1559, and in 1574 had the honour to entertain her at his house of Wadley near Faringdon. He was Sheriff in 1567 and elected to Parliament in 1572. He died in 1583 and was buried in Faringdon Church.

His younger son, Henry, took a larger part in affairs of State. He, too, sat in Parliament, but he is chiefly remembered as Ambassador to France and friend of Henry IV., who is said to have mourned his death at the siege of La Fère in 1596. There is a curious portrait of the younger Unton in the National Portrait Gallery.

Students of ancient painting are apt to bestow exclusive attention upon the long series of pictures in the Museum of Naples recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to forget the many and excellent specimens of the art still extant in Rome. Yet these often surpass in quality anything found in the buried Campanian cities, since it is only natural that painters of ability and talent should have sought for work in the capital rather than in Pompeii and other holiday resorts. The neglect of the paintings discovered in Rome is of comparatively recent date. In the seventeenth century Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635–1700) had inaugurated a systematic series of publications of the figured monuments of Rome, including paintings engraved after his own drawings. A host of draughtsmen and engravers followed in his steps, and down to the middle of the nineteenth century appeared volume after volume of illustrations of Roman paintings, admirably calculated to please the cultivated traveller and amateur, but as a rule totally wanting in accuracy.