ure parallel to it, I
suppose for the orchestra. On each side are the Consuls' boxes, and
below in the theater of Herculaneum were found two equestrian statues
of excellent workmanship, occupying the same space as the great bronze
lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest of the theaters is said to have
been comic, tho I should doubt. From both you see, as you sit on the
seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty.

You then pass through ancient streets; they are very narrow and the
houses rather small, but are constructed on an admirable plan,
especially for the climate. The rooms are built round a court, or
sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is a
fountain sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted
columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaics sometimes
wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and
more or less beautiful according to the rank of the inhabitant. There
were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to decorate
the royal museums. Little winged figures and small ornaments of
exquisite elegance yet remain. There is an ideal life in the forms of
these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, tho most are evidently
the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if from the atmosphere
of mental beauty that surrounds them, every human being caught a
splendor not his own.

In one house you see how the bedrooms were managed: a small sofa was
built up, where the cushions were placed; two pictures, one
representing Diana and Endymion and the other Venus and Mars, decorate
the chamber; and a little niche which contains the statue of a
domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest
marbles, agate, jasper and porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain
and the snow white columns, whose etablatures strew the floor of the
portico they supported. The houses have only one story, and the
apartments, tho not large, are very lofty. A great advantage results
from this, wholly unknown in our cities.

The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests as it were of white
fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures loaded with
sculpture, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This
was the excellence of the ancients: their private expenses were
comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of
Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with the most beautiful
specimens of art, but s