CHAP. IX. AMONG INDIVIDUALS. 



middle class of persons, are composed of iron or. 

 brass. These antiquities give a correct idea of 

 the domestic arrangements of the people, such 

 as they were at the period when the catastrophe 

 occurred, and they show most clearly that gold 

 and silver were not to be found in the dwellings 

 of the inhabitants ; though the size of the houses, 

 the paintings, the statues, the books, and other 

 objects, sufficiently prove that the proprietors 

 of them were persons at least in easy circum- 

 stances. From their durable nature, if gold and 

 silver had been in these houses at the time of 

 the calamity, they would have been found there, 

 as the iron and bronze have been, of which their 

 spoons and forks were made ; and which retain 

 their original shape after a lapse of more than 

 seventeen hundred years. 



Had the same calamity visited one of the 

 richer provincial cities of any part of Europe, 

 but especially of England, Holland, or France, 

 every house, whatever length of time might have 

 elapsed, would, at being opened, have displayed 

 a greater or less quantity of the precious metals. 

 An examination of this kind is a more convincing 

 testimony than any of the numerous and vague 

 relations which historians have handed down ; 

 and we may safely infer from it, what has been 

 before remarked, that among the Romans those 

 precious metals which form a portion of every 

 family's stock of furniture were so rarely in use 



