ome to the
great show; at the time of an election, when politicians were scheming
and working to get themselves or their friends into power; when gayly
dressed crowds thronged the streets on their way to the amphitheatre
to see the gladiatorial fight; when there was feasting and revelry in
every house; when merchants were exulting in the midst of thriving
trade; when the pagan temples were hung with garlands and filled with
gifts; when the slaves were at work in the mills, the kitchens, and
the baths; when the gladiators were fighting the wild beasts of the
arena--then it was that a swift destruction swept over the city and
buried it in a silence that lasted for centuries.

Vesuvius, the volcano so near them, but which had been silent so many
years that they had ceased to dread it, suddenly woke into activity,
and threw out of its summit a torrent of burning lava and ashes, and
in a few short hours buried the two cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii
so completely that two centuries after no one could tell the precise
place where they had stood, and men built houses and cultivated farms
over the spot, never dreaming that cities lay beneath them.

[Illustration: THE ATRIUM IN THE HOUSE OF PANSA RESTORED.]

But here we are at the house of Pansa. Let us go in. We do not wait
for any invitation from the owner, for he left it nearly two thousand
years ago, and his descendants, if he have any, are totally ignorant
of their illustrious descent. First we enter a large hall called the
Atrium. You can see from the magnificence of this apartment in what
style the rich Pompeiians lived. The floor is paved in black and white
mosaic, with a marble basin in the centre. The doors opening from
this hall conduct us to smaller apartments, two reception rooms, a
parlor, the library, and six diminutive bedrooms, only large enough to
contain a bedstead, and with no window. It must have been the fashion
to sleep with open doors, or the sleepers must inevitably have been
suffocated.

At the end of the Atrium you see a large court with a fountain in the
middle. This was called the Peristyle. Around it was a portico with
columns. To the left were three bedchambers and the kitchen, and to
the right three bedchambers and the dining-room. Behind the Peristyle
was a grand saloon, and back of this the garden. The upper stories of
this house have entirely disappeared. This is a spacious house, but
there are some in the city more beautifully decorated,