rever it was required.

The same contrivance is used at the present day in Naples, and in all
the towns of that region. In going along the streets in a cool evening
or morning, you will often see one of these brass pans before a door,
with a little fire blazing in it, and children or other persons before
it, warming their hands. Afterwards, if you watch, you will see that the
people take it into the house.

The ancient inhabitants of Pompeii depended entirely on arrangements
like these for warming their rooms. There is not a chimney to be found
in the whole town.

In respect to windows, the reason why they did not have them was because
they had no glass to put into them. They could not make glass in those
days well enough and easily enough to use it for windows. Of course they
had openings in their houses to admit the air and the light, and these
openings might perhaps be called windows. But in order to prevent the
wind and rain from coming in, it was necessary to have them placed in
sheltered situations, as, for example, under porticos and piazzas. The
custom therefore arose of having a great many porticos in the houses,
with rooms opening from them; and in order that they might not be too
much exposed, they were generally made so as to have the open side of
them inwards, towards the centre of the house, where a small, square
place was left, without a roof over it, to admit the light and air.

Of course the rain would come in through this open space, and the floor
of it was generally formed into a square marble basin, to receive the
water. This was called the _impluvium_. Sometimes there was a fountain
in the centre of the impluvium, and all around it were the porticos,
within and under which were the doors opening into the different rooms.

The guide, who conducted Mr. George and his party, led them into several
of these houses, and every one was much interested in examining the
arrangement of the rooms, and in imagining how the people looked in
going in and out, and in living in them. The bed rooms were extremely
small. The walls of some of them were beautifully painted, but the rooms
themselves were often not much bigger than a state room in a steamship.
The bedstead was a sort of berth, formed upon a marble shelf built
across from wall to wall.

In some of the houses there were more rooms than could be arranged
around one court; and in such cases there were two, and sometimes three
courts. In one case, the th