he columns was equal to the width of the colonnade, about
sixteen feet. Their unfluted part is painted yellow, the rest is
coated with white stucco. The floor is elevated two steps above the
level of the tablinum.

A curious religious painting, now almost effaced, was found in the
kitchen, representing the worship offered to the Lares, under whose
protection and custody the provisions and all the cooking utensils
were placed. In the centre is a sacrifice in honor of those deities,
who are represented below in the usual form of two huge serpents
brooding over an altar. There is something remarkable in the upper
figures. The female figure in the centre holds a cornucopia, and each
of the male figures holds a small vase in the hand nearer to the
altar, and a horn in the other. All the faces are quite black, and the
heads of the male figures are surrounded with something resembling a
glory. Their dress in general, and especially their boots, which are
just like the Hungarian boots now worn on the stage, appear different
from anything which is to be met with elsewhere. Are these figures
meant for the Lares themselves? On each side are represented different
sorts of eatables. On the left a bunch of small birds, a string of
fish, a boar with a girth about his body, and a magnificently curling
tail, and a few loaves, or rather cakes, of the precise pattern of
some which have been found in Pompeii: on the right, an eel spitted on
a wire, a ham, a boar's head, and a joint of meat, which, as pig-meat
seems to have been in request here, we may conjecture to be a loin of
pork; at least it is as like that as anything else. It is suspended by
a reed, as is still done at Rome. The execution of this painting is
coarse and careless in the extreme, yet there is a spirit and freedom
of touch which has hit off the character of the objects represented,
and forbids us to impute the negligence which is displayed to
incapacity. Another object of interest in the kitchen is a stove for
stews and similar preparations, very much like those charcoal stoves
which are seen in extensive kitchens at the present day. Before it lie
a knife, strainers, and a strange-looking sort of a frying-pan, with
four spherical cavities, as if it were meant to cook eggs. A similar
one, containing twenty-nine egg-holes, has been found, which is
circular, about fifteen inches in diameter, and without a handle.
Another article of kitchen furniture is a sort of flat ladle