ering-place. It was here
that Senator Livinius Regulus fixed his residence when banished from
Rome in 59; and we learn from Suetonius, that the emperor Claudius had a
villa here. He mentions it incidentally as the place where the Emperor's
little son died in a singular manner: the child threw a pear up in the
air, and caught it in his mouth, and, before any one could come to his
assistance, died from choking.

Pompeii was rediscovered in 1748, by Don Rocca Alcubura, Spanish Colonel
of Engineers. "Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when it was
disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues--its
walls fresh as if painted yesterday; scarcely a hue faded on the rich
mosaic of its floors. In its forum the half-finished columns as left by
the workman's hands, in its gardens the sacrificial tripod, in its halls
the chest of treasure, in its baths the strigil, in its theatres the
counter of admission, in its saloons the furniture and the lamp, in its
triclinia the fragments of the last feast, in its cubicula the perfumes
and the rouge of faded beauty--and everywhere the bones and skeletons of
those who once moved the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of
luxury and of life." The process of disentombment was not proceeded with
very rapidly at first; it lingered on, in not too skilful hands, till
Garibaldi appointed Alexandre Dumas as superintendent of the work in
1860. This, however, did not improve matters; the great novelist lived
at Naples in first-rate style on the liberal income allowed him, and
after one visit to the scene of operation, left the work to take care of
itself. All was changed, however, under the _regime_ of Signor Florelli,
who united the most enthusiastic interest in the work to eminent skill
and unwearied patience. Since he undertook the management, the
excavations have been made on a scale, and with a care, that will soon
exhaust whatever objects still remain buried under the ashes.

Our guide first took us into the Museum, where we saw under glass cases
some of the Pompeiian corpses, so wonderfully preserved by the plaster
of Paris process, described in our visit to the Museum at Naples; also
many other most interesting mementoes of the buried city, too numerous
to mention. From thence we roamed out into the deserted streets:

"I stood within the city disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; a