of the remains of Pompeii, and
to exhibit, as far as our materials will permit, the private life of
the first century in all its degrees, we shall begin with one or two
of the stores. These present great similarity in their arrangements,
and indicate that the tribe of storekeepers was very inferior in
wealth and comfort to that of our own time and country. They are for
the most part very small, and sometimes without any interior apartment
on the ground floor. The upper floor must have comprised one or two
sleeping-rooms; but there is, as we believe, only one house in which
the upper floor is in existence.

It is rare at Pompeii to see a whole house set apart for purposes of
trade, a part being occupied by the store itself, the rest furnishing
a comfortable dwelling for the owner. The houses of the richer
classes, instead of presenting a handsome elevation to the street,
were usually surrounded with stores. They furnished considerable
revenue.

Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, speaks of the ruinous state into which
some of his stores had fallen, "insomuch that not only the men, but
the mice had quitted them," and hints at the gain which he hoped to
derive from this seemingly untoward circumstance. One Julia Felix
possessed nine hundred stores, as we learn from an inscription in
Pompeii.

At night the whole front was closed with shutters, sliding in grooves
cut in the lintel and basement wall before the counter, and by the
door, which is thrown far back, so as to be hardly visible.

There is an oven at the end of the counter furthest from the street,
and three steps have been presumed to support different sorts of
vessels or measures for liquids. From these indications it is supposed
to have been a cook's shop; for the sale, perhaps, both of undressed
and dressed provisions, as is indicated in the view. The oven probably
served to prepare, and keep constantly hot, some popular dishes for
the service of any chance customer; the jars might hold oil, olives,
or the fish-pickle called _garum_, an article of the highest
importance in a Roman kitchen, for the manufacture of which Pompeii
was celebrated.[16]

Fixed vessels appear inconvenient for such uses on account of the
difficulty of cleaning them out; but the practice, it is said,
continues to this day at Rome, where the small shopkeepers keep their
oil in similar jars, fixed in a counter of masonry. All the ornaments
in the view are copied from Pompeii. In front of