266 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



yet all laid open. Many men, when we were there, were 

 employed in the excavations under the direction of the govern- 

 ment, and we saw many of the articles which had been recently 

 found, as well as an immense number that have been discovered 

 there during the researches of the last century and a half, now 

 preserved in the Museo Borbonico at Naples. 



We see Pompeii just as it was nearly eighteen centuries ago. 

 The gates, the walls, the streets, the fountains, the public baths, 

 the Forum, with its lofty and magnificent marble columns, the 

 tombs, the temples remain, though stripped, to a great extent, 

 of the magnificent works of art, the inimitable frescoes, and 

 other decorations which adorned them when all was so suddenly 

 swallowed up. As we stand and gaze upon the whole or upon 

 any of its splendid parts, one cannot help a feeling of wonder 

 and amazement at the vast wealth, the boundless luxuHance of 

 this corrupt city. The pavement of the streets appears with its 

 solid stone, worn, in many places, into deep ruts. Bakers' 

 shops, and stalls used for an infinite variety of purposes, all 

 indicated by characteristic articles found in them, are as easily 

 distinguislied as the same among us. We saw loaves of bread 

 that were baked eighteen hundred years ago, as perfect in form 

 and shape as if just from the oven, meal, figs, eggs, spices, 

 plums, cooking utensils, and a thousand other articles taken 

 from Pompeii, and still quite easily distinguished, many of 

 them indeed perfectly preserved. Bedsteads, both of wood and 

 iron, were found, and many implements of brass and iron, stone 

 and earthen-ware, bolls, trumpets, gridirons, bronze saucepans^ 

 colanders, kettles, ladles, pastry and jelly moulds in bronze, 

 hot water urns, much like our tea urns, lanterns with horn 

 lights, spits, and many other kitchen iitensils, chains, locks, 

 bolts, portable fire-places, iron stoves, dice, a lady's toilet com- 

 plete, combs, rings, thimbles, paint for the cheeks and brushes 

 for using it, cosmetics of various kinds, earrings, and fruits, 

 such as almonds, dates, nuts, grapes, chestnuts, many kinds of 

 apothecaries' medicines, and quack advertisements, a box of 

 gilded })ills, various surgeons' instruments, a good deal like 

 ours, play bills, ivory opera tickets, bits for horses, cruppers 

 and stirrups, candciabras, and lamps of exquisite grace and 

 elegance of form, scales, and a very great variety of gold and 

 silver and bronze coin, finger rings of endless variety of form 



