a never-failing appendage to these temples. I
think it was in this one that they excavated the
skeleton of a reverend bon-vivant, who grasped
in his lifeless fingers the thigh-bone of a fowl.
Imagination conjures up before us some of
our old acquaintance, the fellows of Cambridge
and Oxford. In the case of an eruption from
the Gog Magog hills, or an overflow of the
Isis, would any of them be found, I wonder,
in a similar situation ? But how striking the
lesson to be derived from the discovery of
some of these remains! The mother with
her child in her arms; the noble maiden in
the act of bearing off her jewels; the soldier
at his post; the priest at the dining-table!
Everywhere the ruling passion strong in
death. Who does not recall the last
exclamation of a late Chief Justice, " Gentlemen of
the Jury, you are discharged," or the " Tête
d'armée " of the dying Napoleon!

Let us pause for a moment to contemplate
another illustration of the same kind. Here,
within this narrow cell, you may yet trace in
the wall a small uneven hole, seemingly formed
by the stroke of some heavy instrument.
Beneath it was found the skeleton of a man,
holding an axe; and at his side were a bunch
of keys and some bags of money which he was
apparently in the act of carrying off. It is
this man whom Bulwer in his " Last Days of
Pompeii " has revived for our entertainment
under the name of Calenus the priest. What
scene of horror can the imagination of the
novelist conjure up, which nature has not
already exhibited—and when a modern
writer drew the death of Chowles in the
vaults of Old St. Paul's, was he aware that
the counterpart of his fancy was to be found
in an actual event of two thousand years ago?

But while I have been moralising, we have
passed into a street. It has been styled
the street of Abundance, from the fact that
a horn of plenty or Cornucopia figures as
the emblem on one of the fountains. What
a magic scene unfolds itself to our view as we
walk along! Here are the marks of wheels
yet distinctly to be traced on the pavement;
and the large square stones in the middle of
the way which enabled the pedestrian to cross
from one side of the street to the other without
dirtying his sandals. On either side of us
are the shops, now stripped of their contents,
which decorate the Museo Borbonico at
Naples; shops of surgeons filled with all sorts
of implements, some of which had been
believed by the moderns to be of their own
invention; shops of bakers, with the mills for
making bread, moulds of various forms and
sizes, and loaves of bread now petrified into
an adamantine substance, but still showing
the name of the maker clearly marked upon
them; shops of oil-sellers; shops for the sale
of wines and hot drinks; shops of barbers,
not the frizzled and perfumed attendants of
modern streets and arcades, but resembling
rather the barbers of the middle ages, who
wielded the lancet, clumsily wrenched out
teeth, and ignorantly prescribed drugs; shops
of dealers in lamps; shops or studios of
artists, in some of which were found the
models from which they worked; and
cauponæ or inns—a cross between the
British chop-house and gin-palace. How
dark and dingy these shops must have been,
and how easy to have been cheated in them!
They were, indeed, nothing but dark closets,
unfurnished with windows, and deriving what
little light struggled into them from the open
doors. You may observe the very fellows to
them in the streets of modern Naples; as you
may observe a pretty good imitation of the
Roman houses in some of the abodes of the
poorer classes of Neapolitans round the city.
The identical capotes or hoods worn by the
sailors and fishermen of the present day are
to be found in drawings of the same classes
discovered at Pompeii; and if you and I were
great antiquaries, and had time or leisure to
rummage about, I think we should discover
that the modern Italians are indebted for
more of their customs and usages than is
commonly supposed to their predecessors of
Rome.

I do not know how the sight of all these
objects acts upon you, but to me it is
bewildering. I know not which way to turn, nor
where to begin. A collection of wonders on
a large scale almost always defeats its end;
there is so much to see, that we end by seeing
nothing, and pass our time in moving
feverishly from one object to another. Half-a-
dozen Roman lamps dug up in a gentleman's
garden, or half-a-dozen coins laid out on his
library table, would keep us in a state of
comfortable ecstasy for a whole afternoon;
whereas I have never entered the British
Museum without a feeling of despair, nor left
it without a sense of disappointment. For
Heaven's sake, let us leave the street, and
strive to confine our attention to some one
object—a house, for example. See, here is
one just adapted to our purpose, the abode
apparently of wealth, the house of some rich
Pompeian who gave parties, who was fêted
and caressed, who was envied and toadied, just
two thousand years ago!

The external aspect of the house is very
different from that of a modern residence.
There appear to have been no windows looking
out on the street, and only one story. A
long expanse of dead wall is broken by the
gate or door. Passing through it, we find
ourselves in the entrance-hall, an enclosed
space about six feet wide and thirty long.
Here it was that the porter kept his watch,
not softly snoozing on a well-stuffed seat, but
frequently in chains, and with a dog, also
chained, at his feet. An inscription, " Beware
of the dog," generally gave the visitor an
opportunity of withdrawing from the caresses
of the animal—an opportunity not always
accorded in the entrance-halls of the moderns.

Passing through this hall, we find ourselves
in a sort of square courtyard, open at the top,