said to have been comic, tho I should doubt. From both you
see, as you sit on the seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty.

You then pass through the ancient streets; they are very narrow, and the
houses rather small, but all constructed on an admirable plan,
especially for this climate. The rooms are built round a court, or
sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is a
fountain, sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted
columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaic, sometimes
wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and
more or less beautiful, according to the rank of the inhabitant. There
were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to decorate
the royal museums. Little winged figures, and small ornaments of
exquisite elegance, yet remain. There is an ideal life in the forms of
these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, tho most are evidently
the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if, from the atmosphere
of mental beauty which surrounded them, every human being caught a
splendor not his own.

In one house you see how the bed-rooms were managed; a small sofa was
built up, where the cushions were placed; two pictures, one representing
Diana and Endymion, the other Venus and Mars, decorate the chamber; and
a little niche, which contains the statue of a domestic god. The floor
is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest marbles, agate, jasper, and
porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain and the snow-white columns,
whose entablatures strew the floor of the portico they supported. The
houses have only one story, and the apartments, tho not large, are very
lofty. A great advantage results from this, wholly unknown in our
cities.

The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests, as it were, of white
fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with
sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This
was the excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses were
comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of
Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of
art, but small. But their public buildings are everywhere marked by the
bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little town
of Pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants), it is
wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings.
A