NAPLES. 153 



up SO long ago, the shaking and the splashing ; but there is 

 no particular reason to doubt the facts as stated, and there 

 the bit of water main is for any man to see. 



One exceedingly interesting monument of the past I must 

 mention, though it did not reach its present place until recently. 

 The important question of whether people before the Christian 

 Era wore trousers under their tunics has been settled. It is 

 possible, though not probable, that some may be reading this 

 who do not know how volcanic ashes filtered in around such 

 bodies as were left in overwhelmed Pompeii, were dampened 

 by rain and hardened by heat or time or whatever it may have 

 been, so as to form a solid casing. When discovered, what 

 was within was dust. It was carefully shaken out and liquid 

 plaster poured in instead. So when the case of ashes was^ 

 taken off, in pieces, a cast was found of what had been within. 

 And one of these casts was that of a man in trousers. Q. E. D. 



Whoever has not read the "Last Days of Pompeii" had 

 better do so at once. I can think of no higher praise to give 

 that book than to say that it reminds me of Ezekiel xxxvii 

 — the Valley of Dry Bones. For the dry bones of Pompeii 

 live, and one half expects in walking through her streets, to 

 see Arbaces, the wise Magian, the Hermes of the Burning 

 Girdle, majestic with his retinue ; or immortal Nydia, swiftly 

 and surely threading her blind way where the seeing could 

 not see for outer darkness. 



But Pompeii ! What is Pompeii ? A thing of yesterday, 

 a pleasant summer resort on Sarnus' banks at the foot of 

 Vesuvius, overwhelmed by dust and ashes and boiling mud 

 in the Sotli year or so of the Christian Era — and dug up the 

 other day. 



Go to PcTCStum — Poseidonia, the City of Neptune — which 

 was antiquity in ruins when Rome was founded, and looked 

 then exactly as it does now. There is standing a small bit of 

 wall and three Doric temples — two near together, one haugh- 

 tily aloof. Nothing beside remains. And I have no imagi- 

 nation to conceive anything more impressive. A flat plain, 



