28 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FOA3ES. [CHAP. 



private customs, inventions, and civilization is only from 

 their works, which often must mislead from a change 

 of terms. And is it not most extraordinary to find all 

 that ancient writers mention as the custom of their time 

 realized in an actual Roman city laid open to our senses ? 

 Who could have been so sanguine as to expect to see the 

 chalked advertisements, the titles of the shops, the tickets 

 of the theatre, the gentlemen's names on their houses, 

 the loaves, honeycomb, soap, grain, raisins, plums, nay, 

 the very fresh olives which the ancients had. Pompeii 

 differs from all other towns, inasmuch as we see the 

 smallest houses, the meanest shops, and the most trifling 

 manners and customs of a nation of two thousand years 

 since, of which we are ignorant and whose name carries 

 no charm in its sound, but of a people whose history has 

 fortunately been handed down to us, and which we are 

 taught from our infancy as that of one of the most 

 extraordinary and powerful nations that ever existed. 

 These ideas struck me particularly on a second visit. The 

 views of the streets of Pompeii are such as to our almost 

 certain knowledge are unique, with the exception of one 

 other city, which from its peculiar situation may probably 

 never be excavated in the same manner/ 



'ROME, Good Friday, April 15th, 1826. 



' In the afternoon heard the service of Vespers in the 

 Sistine. The whole, as well as last night, was in mourning, 

 viz. purple ; the canopy and covering removed from the 

 Pope's throne, which was plain wood with purple 

 cushions ; the tapers on the altar and above the great rail 

 which divides the chapel were dull red, and the Cardinals' 

 seats entirely deprived of their rich carpets ; the Pope 

 himself in red and the Cardinals in purple robes. When 

 the Tenebrse begins (I allude to all three days), all the 

 candles were lighted, including fifteen small ones on a 

 branched candlestick, which are extinguished one by one 

 as the chanting proceeds, which is varied every day 

 with suitable Psulms and Lessons chiefly from the 



