minutely, and gave the result in a letter
addressed to the French Academy of Sciences. Let us now imagine all
these salesrooms, all these shops, open and stocked with goods, and then
the display, the purchasers, the passers-by, the bustle and noise
peculiar to the south, and the street will no longer seem so dead. Let
us add that the doors of the houses were closed only in the evening; the
promenaders and loungers could then peep, as they went along, into every
alley, and make merry at the bright adornments of the _atrium_. Nor is
this all. The upper stories, although now crumbled to dust, were in
communication with the street. Windows opened discreetly, which must,
here and there, have been the framework of some brown head and
countenance anxious to see and to be seen. The latest excavations have
revealed the existence of hanging covered balconies, long exterior
corridors, pierced with casements, frequently depicted in the
paintings. There the fair Pompeian could have taken her station in order
to participate in the life outside. The good housewife of those times,
like her counterpart in our day, could there have held out her basket to
the street-merchant who went wandering about with his portable shop; and
more than one handsome girl may at the same post have carried her
fingers to her lips, there to cull (the ancient custom) the kiss that
she flung to the young Pompeian concealed down yonder in the corner of
the wall. Thus re-peopled, the old-time street, narrow as it is, was
gayer than our own thoroughfares; and the brightly-painted houses, the
variegated walls, the monuments, and the fountains, gave vivid animation
to a picture too dazzling for our gaze.

[Illustration: Closed House with a Balcony, recently discovered.]

These fountains, which were very simple, consisted of large square
basins formed of five stone slabs, one for the bottom and four for the
sides, fastened together with iron braces. The water fell into them from
fonts more or less ornamental and usually representing the muzzle of
some animal--lions' heads, masks, an eagle holding a hare in his beak,
with the stream flowing into a receptacle from the hare's mouth. One
of these fountains is surrounded with an iron railing to prevent
passers-by from falling into it. Another is flanked by a capacious
vaulted reservoir (_castellum_) and closed with a door. Those who have
seen Rome know how important the ancients considered the water that they
brought fr