e or less rich pavements,
decorated walls, and such works of art as the owner most affects.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--PERISTYLE IN HOUSE OF THE VETTII. (Present
state.)]

When it seems desirable for shade and coolness, coloured curtains or
awnings may be suspended between the columns, so that one can sit or
walk with comfort under the cloistered portion. At the sides are
apartments for different purposes. At the far end, or elsewhere, there
is regularly the largest dining-room, often with mosaic floor and
generally with pictured walls. Whereabouts in the house the family or
an invited party should dine would depend partly on the number to be
present, partly on the season of the year, and partly on some passing
inclination. A house of any pretensions would possess several rooms
used, or capable of being used, for this purpose. Some dining-rooms
had what we should call French windows on three sides, permitting the
diners to enjoy the view of the garden or the shrubbery outside.

Other large and airy apartments or saloons off the peristyle were used
for social conversation, or as drawing-rooms. Farther back still,
approached by another passage or door, there was often to be found a
garden, containing an arbour or a terrace covered with a trailing
vine, of the kind known in modern Italy as a _pergola_. In suitable
weather _al fresco_ meals were often taken here, and occasionally
there were fixed couches and tables of masonry always ready for that
purpose.

Coming back from the garden into the court, we might explore other
passages, leading to the kitchen or to the bathrooms of hot, warm, and
cold water. These offices would be respectively situated wherever
circumstances made them most convenient. In the kitchen the part
corresponding to our "range" consisted of a flat structure of masonry,
on which the fire was lighted. The cooking pots were placed either
upon ridges of masonry running across the fire or upon three legged
stands of iron. The accompanying illustrations will sufficiently show
what is meant. The bedrooms, little better than cells, of the slaves,
and also the storerooms, were variously distributed. Underground
cellars were apparently exceptional, although examples may be seen at
Pompeii.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--KITCHEN HEARTH IN THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII.]

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--KITCHEN HEARTHS (Drawing).]

Somewhere in one of the bays of the hall, at the back of the peristyle
court, or elsewhere, w