h it? Then, rifle the Naples museum, which has
despoiled it. You will find enough of bedsteads, in the collection of
bronzes there, for the cubicula; enough of carved benches, tables,
stands, and precious vases for the oecus, the exedra, and the wings, and
enough of lamps to hang up; enough of candelabra to place in the
saloons. Stretch carpets over the costly mosaic pavements and even over
the simple _opus signinum_ (a mixture of lime and crushed brick) which
covered the floor of the unpretending chambers with a solid
incrustation. Above all, replace the ceilings and the roofs, and then
the doors and draperies; in fine, revive upon all these walls--the
humblest as well as the most splendid--the bright and vivid pictures now
effaced. What light, and what a gay impression! How all these clear,
bold colors gleam out in the sunshine, which descends in floods from an
open sky into the peristyle and the atrium! But that is not all: you
must conjure up the dead. Arise, then, and obey our call, O young
Pompeians of the first century! I summon Pansa, Paratus, their wives,
their children, their slaves; the ostiarius, who kept the door; the
_atriensis_, who controlled the atrium; the _scoparius_, armed with his
birch-broom; the _cubicularii_, who were the bedroom servants; the
_pedagogue_, my colleague, who was a slave like the rest, although he
was absolute master of the library, where he alone, perhaps, understood
the secrets of the papyri it contained. I hasten to the kitchen: I want
to see it as it was in the ancient day,--the _carnarium_, provided with
pegs and nails for the fresh provisions, is suspended to the ceiling;
the cooking ranges are garnished with chased stew-pans and coppers, and
large bronze pails, with luxurious handles, are ranged along on the
floor; the walls are covered with shining utensils, long-handled spoons
bent in the shape of a swan's neck and head, skillets and frying-pans,
the spit and its iron stand, gridirons, pastry-moulds (patty-pans?)
fish-moulds (_formella_), and what is no less curious, the _apalare_ and
the _trua_, flat spoons pierced with holes either to fry eggs or to beat
up liquids, and, in fine, the funnels, the sieves, the strainers, the
_colum vinarium_, which they covered with snow and then poured their
wine over it, so that the latter dropped freshened and cooled into the
cups below,--all rare and precious relics preserved by Vesuvius, and
showing in what odd corners elegance nestled,