sts--which must
have been very delightful to a Pompeian of companionable habits
and fine feelings. It is quite impossible, however, that the bouts
described by Bulwer as taking place all at the same time on the arena
should really have done so: the combatants would have rolled and
tumbled and trampled over each other an hundred times in the narrow
space.

Of all the voices with which it once rang the poor little amphitheatre
has kept only an echo. But this echo is one of the most perfect ever
heard: prompt clear, startling, it blew back the light chaff we threw
to it with amazing vehemence, and almost made us doubt if it were not
a direct human utterance. Yet how was Ventisei to know our names? And
there was no one else to call them but ourselves. Our "_dolce duca_"
gathered a nosegay from the crumbling ledges, and sat down in the cool
of the once-cruel cells beneath, and put it prettily together for the
ladies. When we had wearied ourselves with the echo he arose and led
us back into Pompeii.

IV.

The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are alike: the
entrance-room next the door; the parlor or drawing-room next that;
then the _impluvium_, or unroofed space in the middle of the house,
where the rains were caught and drained into the cistern, and where
the household used to come to wash itself, primitively, as at a pump;
the little garden, with its painted columns, behind the _impluvium_,
and, at last, the dining-room. There are minute bed-chambers on either
side, and, as I said, a shop at one side in front, for the sale of the
master's grain, wine, and oil. The pavements of all the houses are of
mosaic, which, in the better sort, is very delicate and beautiful, and
is found sometimes perfectly uninjured. An exquisite pattern, often
repeated, is a ground of tiny cubes of white marble with dots of black
dropped regularly into it. Of course there were many picturesque and
fanciful designs, of which the best have been removed to the Museum
in Naples; but several good ones are still left, and (like that of the
Wild Boar) give names to the houses in which they are found.

But, after all, the great wonder, the glory, of these Pompeian houses
is in their frescos. If I tried to give an idea of the luxury of color
in Pompeii, the most gorgeous adjectives would be as poorly able to
reproduce a vivid and glowing sense of those hues as the photography
which now copies the drawing of the decorations; so I do not try.