(Plate XXVII.). The Street of Tombs is
exposed, and young cypresses grow up among the monuments. The dead,
which were already buried when Vesuvius scattered its ashes over them,
listen now to strange footsteps on the road. But the unfortunates who
were buried alive under the shower of ashes have decayed and turned to
dust. And yet they may still be seen in the museums, with distorted
limbs and their faces to the ground. We see them in the position they
assumed when they fell and the ashes were bedded close to their sides.
Thus they remained lying for eighteen hundred years, imbedded as in a
mould. Their bodies returned to the earth, but the empty space remained.
By pouring plaster into these forms, life-like figures of persons have
been reproduced just as they were when death overtook them. Here lies a
woman who fell outside her house and grasped with convulsive fingers a
bag full of gold and silver. Here is a man resting his heavy head on his
elbow, and here a dog which has curled itself up before it was at last
suffocated.

So the sleeping town has wakened to life again, and the dead have
returned from the kingdom of shadows. The excavated pictures,
sculptures, and art treasures of Pompeii, together with the whole
arrangement of the town, the style of building and the inscriptions,
have thrown an unexpected light on the life of antiquity. We can even
read the passing conceits scribbled on the walls. At one corner a house
is offered for hire from July I--"intending tenants should apply to the
slave Primus." On another a jester advises an acquaintance: "Go and hang
thyself." A citizen writes of a friend: "I have heard with sorrow that
thou art dead--so adieu!" Another wall bears the following warning:
"This is no place for idlers; go away, good-for-nothing." It is curious
to read the names Sodom and Gomorrah, evidently scribbled by a Jew. Low
down on the walls small schoolboys have practised writing the Greek
alphabet, showing that Greek was included in their curriculum. And once
were found written in charcoal, and only partly legible, the words,
"Enjoy the fire, Christian," a scoff at the martyrs who, soaked in tar,
were burned as torches in Nero's gardens.

From Naples we take a steamer for Egypt. After crossing the Bay of
Naples we have to starboard the charming island of Capri. On its
northern side you may swim or row in a shallow boat, under an arch of
rock three feet high, into the Blue Grotto. Inside is a quiet