es, a boastful conversation among
the Pompeians at the baths, in which the barbarians hear how Agricola
has broken the backbone of a rebellion in Britain; and in which all
the speakers begin their observations with "Ho! my Lepidus!" and "Ha!
my Diomed!" In the mean time we return to the present day, and step
down the Street of Plenty along with Ventisei.)

III.

It is proper, after seeing the sites of some of the principal temples
in Pompeii (such as those of Jupiter and Venus), to cross the fields
that cover a great breadth of the buried city, and look into the
amphitheatre, where, as every body knows, the lions had no stomach
for Glaucus on the morning of the fatal eruption. The fields are now
planted with cotton, and of course we thought those commonplaces about
the wonder the Pompeians would feel could they come back to see that
New-World plant growing above their buried homes. We might have told
them, the day of our visit, that this cruel plant, so long watered
with the tears of slaves, and fed with the blood of men, was now an
exile from its native fields, where war was plowing with sword and
shot the guilty land, and rooting up the subtlest fibres of the
oppression in which cotton had grown king. And the ghosts of wicked
old Pompeii, remembering the manifold sins that called the fires of
hell to devour her, and thinking on this exiled plant, the latest
witness of God's unforgetting justice, might well have shuddered,
through all their shadow, to feel how terribly He destroys the enemies
of Nature and man.

But the only Pompeian presences which haunted our passage of the
cotton-field were certain small

"Phantoms of delight,"

with soft black eyes and graceful ways, who ran before us and plucked
the bolls of the cotton and sold them to us. Embassies bearing red and
white grapes were also sent out of the cottages to our excellencies;
and there was some doubt of the currency of the coin which we gave
these poor children in return.

There are now but few peasants living on the land over the head of
Pompeii, and the Government allows no sales of real estate to be made
except to itself. The people who still dwell here can hardly be said
to own their possessions, for they are merely allowed to cultivate
the soil. A guard stationed night and day prevents them from making
excavations, and they are severely restricted from entering the
excavated quarters of the city alone.

The cotton whitens over two thirds