416 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1800. 



— andCupld playing on the tibia. — 

 In one of the houses likewise is a 

 painting of a Grecian temple, a- 

 dorned with twenty fluted doric 

 pillars. One of the shops (in ap- 

 pearance a soap-boiler's) had soap 

 found in it — another shop evidently 

 was a coffee-house, and the marks 

 of the cups still remain upon the 

 marble dresser. Without side of 

 another shop are Hebrew charac- 

 ters (not written with vowel-points) 

 and other oriental characters, which 

 do not seem to be Hebrew. The 

 iron-work of a calash, apparently 

 like those used at present in Na- 

 ples, was found in the court of a 

 house. The city-gate is highly in- 

 teresting : here is the sentrv-box 

 for the guard — a semi-circular seat 

 in which the Romans used to assem- 

 ble and converse — and a couple of 

 tombs — all in great measure perfect 

 — near one of the tombs is a court 

 containing a stone, on which the 

 bodies of the dead were burnt; and 

 on the walls of this court are large 

 frightful earthen masks with weep- 

 ing faces. The tomb contains one 

 large and several small niches for 

 urns : the large one is supposed to 

 have been for the head of the family. 

 The excavated villa is more entire 

 than any of the ruins yet. laid open, 

 several rooms, the garden and the 

 cellar, being quite in their original 

 state ; the last contains wine-ves- 

 sels cemented to Ihe wall by the 

 cinders which overwhelmed the 

 city, and likewise filled with them. 

 The paintings still remaining in 

 this vUla are beautiful — the hot and 

 cold baths almost entire—the kitchen 

 entire also — in short, by examining 

 these apartments, you precisely as- 

 certain the plan and manner of or- 

 namenting a Roman country-house, 

 which seems to dift'er very little 



from modern Italian villas, except; 

 that the stucco is infinitely finer 

 than any we now see, as likewise 

 are the colours and varnish laid 

 over them. Pompeii was built and 

 paved with lava ; carriage wheels 

 have worn traces in the pavement, 

 and these traces are only four feet 

 wide; nevertheless so narrow are 

 the streets already excavated that 

 there is barely room sufficient for 

 two carriages to pass each other ; 

 the streets have raised footways on 

 each side three feet broad. 



Perhaps the whole world does not 

 exhibit so awful a spectacle as Pom- 

 peii ; and when it was first disco- 

 vered, when skeletons were found 

 heaped together in the streets and 

 houses, when all the utensils and 

 even the very bread of the poor suf- 

 focated inhabitants, were discerni- 

 ble, what a speculation must this 

 ill-fated city have furnished to a 

 thinking mind ! To visit it even 

 now is absolutely to live with the 

 ancient Romans ; and when we see 

 houses, shops, furniture, fountains, 

 streets, carriages, and implements 

 of husbandry,exactly similar to those 

 of the present day, we are apt to 

 conclude that customs and manners 

 have undergone but little variation 

 for the last two thousand years. — 

 The custom of consulting augurs, 

 and that of hiring persons to weep 

 at funerals, are still kept up in the 

 mountainous and secluded parts of 

 Tuscany; and I have frequently 

 seen the Tuscan cattle, when des- 

 tined for slaughter, adorned with 

 chaplets of flowers, precisely as the 

 ancients used to adorn their victims 

 for sacrifice. The Roman butchers, 

 likewise, still wear the dress, and 

 use the knife of heathen sacrificing 

 priests. The old Roman custom of 

 not eating above one regular meal a 





