ll that encloses them are
little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and
dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending in
groups in some funereal office. The high reliefs represent, one a
nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one.

Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more.
It is said that paintings were found within, which are now, as has been
everything movable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal
museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild
woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the
paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver
and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the
step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the
dead, the white freshness of the scarcely-finished marble, the
impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,
contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were
living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.

I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude, tho much
inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were such
great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for the
harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all their
works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature,
and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theaters
were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the ideal
types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted
the light and wind; the odor and the freshness of the country penetrated
the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the flying clouds,
the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above.

VI

OTHER ITALIAN SCENES

VERONA[15]

BY CHARLES DICKENS

I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me out
of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come into the old
Market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint,
and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich
variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at
the core of even this romantic town; scene of one of the most romantic
and beautiful of stories.

It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the
House of the Capule