124 



E. J. SEWELL, ESQ.; ON POMPEII. 



hard and glassy as to make the excavation of the remains 

 nearly impracticable. As it is, the conditions are of the most 

 favourable character. They may be contrasted with those 

 existing in the case of the neighbouring town of Herculaneum. 

 That town was also overwhelmed by volcanic ash from this 

 eruption of Vesuvius, but it was covered to a depth in many 

 places of 65 feet : in the case of Herculaneum, too, the fallen 

 cinders and ashes became drenched with water, and this, under 

 "the pressure of the atmosphere, has hardened into a volcanic 

 rock which renders excavations in Herculaneum very costly and 

 difficult. But, in the case of Pompeii, there was apparently no 

 such great amount of steam or water vapour as to bring al)0ut 

 the same results. The depth of the covering, too, is only about 

 18 or 20 feet, and it seems to have been accompanied by only 

 so moderate an amount of rain or other moisture as to form a 

 mass of a soft tufaceous character, easily dug away, but at the 

 same time, hardened by atmospheric pressure to a sufficient 

 extent to make perfect moulds of human bodies and of many 

 other perishable articles, such as eggs, fruit, etc., buried in it. 

 Soft plaster of Paris poured into these moulds has produced 

 casts giving a most accurate reproduction of the original articles, 

 and so furnishing objects of very great interest. 



I have spoken of the town as having been sealed up, and the 

 expression seems an appropriate one : the fall of the volcanic 

 ash. while it covered over the wall decorations of the houses and 

 buildings and protected them from the aii\ did not in any way 

 injure them ; and mere ephemeral inscriptions made on the 

 walls with paint, or even with charcoal, were quite fresh and 

 legil tle when uncovered, though the charcoal inscriptions rapidly 

 disappear when now exposed to the air. 



Ttiese remains furnish us with a mine of information as to 

 the life, the business, and the anjusements of an Italian provin- 

 cial watering-place in a.d. 79. For instance, while Yitruvius 

 and other ancient lioman writers have described to us all the 

 apartments and arrangements of private houses of different kinds, 

 as well as of public buildings, the actual houses unearthed at 

 Pompeii have in many cases made it possible, for the first time, 

 to understand the technical terms and the details of construction 

 described in their writings. 



But the time and space at my disposal are strictly limited, 

 and in such a wealth of detail it is necessary to select a few 

 salient points. 



The centre of life and business in Pompeii was the Forum. 

 We are rather apt to connect the Forum in a Eoman town too 



