ehemence, and speaks loudly and quickly with a glib
tongue and a sonorous voice. Just take a look at him in the lower
quarters of Naples, which, in more than one point of view, recall the
narrow streets of Pompeii.

These shops are now dismantled. Nothing of them remains but the empty
counters, and here and there the grooves in which the doors slid to and
fro. These doors themselves were but a number of shutters fitting into
each other. But the paintings or carvings which still exist upon some
side pillars are old signs that inform us what was sold on the adjoining
counter. Thus, a goat in terra cotta indicated a milk-depot; a mill
turned by an ass showed where there was a miller's establishment; two
men, walking one ahead of the other and each carrying one end of a
stick, to the middle of which an amphora is suspended, betray the
neighborhood of a wine-merchant. Upon other pillars are marked other
articles not so readily understood,--here an anchor, there a ship, and
in another place a checker-board. Did they understand the game of
Palamedes at Pompeii? A shop near the Thermae, or public warm baths, is
adorned on its front with a representation of a gladiatorial combat. The
author of the painting thought something of his work, which he protected
with this inscription: "_Abiat (habeat) Venerem Pompeianam iradam
(iratam) qui hoc laeserit!_ (May he who injures this picture have the
wrath of the Pompeian Venus upon him!)"

Other shops have had their story written by the articles that they
contained when they were found. Thus, when there were discovered in a
suite of rooms opening on the Street of Herculaneum, certain levers one
of which ended in the foot of a pig, along with hammers, pincers, iron
rings, a wagon-spring, the felloe of a wheel, one could say without
being too bold that there had been the shop of a wagon-maker or
blacksmith. The forge occupied only one apartment, behind which opened
a bath-room and a store-room. Not far from there a pottery is indicated
by a very curious oven, the vault of which is formed of hollow tubes of
baked clay, inserted one within the other. Elsewhere was discovered the
shop of the barber who washed, brushed, shaved, clipped, combed and
perfumed the Pompeians living near the Forum. The benches of masonry are
still seen where the customers sat. As for the dealers in soap,
unguents, and essences, they must have been numerous; their products
supplied not only the toilet of the ladies, b