om a distance by means of the enormous aqueducts, the ruins of
which still mark all the old territories of the empire. Water, abundant
and limpid, ran everywhere, and was never deficient in the Roman cities.
Still it has not been discovered how the supply was obtained for
Pompeii, destitute of springs as that city was, and, at the same time,
elevated above the river, and receiving nothing in its cisterns but the
rain-water so scantily shed beneath the relentless serenity of that
southern sky. The numberless conduits found, of lead, masonry, and
earthenware, and above all, the spouting fountains that leaped and
sparkled in the courtyards of the wealthy houses, have led us to suppose
the existence of an aqueduct, no longer visible, that supplied all this
part of Campania with water.

Besides these fountains, placards and posters enlivened the streets; the
walls were covered with them, and, in sundry places, whitewashed patches
of masonry served for the announcements so lavishly made public. These
panels, dedicated entirely to the poster business, were called _albums_.
Anybody and everybody had the right to paint thereon in delicate and
slender red letters all the advertisements which now-a-days we print on
the last, and even on many other pages of our newspapers. Nothing is
more curious than these inscriptions, which disclose to us all the
subjects engaging the attention of the little city; not only its
excitements, but its language, ancient and modern, collegiate and
common--the Oscan, the Greek, the Latin, and the local dialect. Were we
learned, or anxious to appear so, we could, with the works of the really
erudite (Fiorelli, Garrucci, Mommsen, etc.), to help us, have compiled a
chapter of absolutely appalling science in reference to the epigraphic
monuments of Pompeii. We could demonstrate by what gradations the Oscan
language--that of the Pompeian autonomy--yielded little by little to the
Roman language, which was that of the unity of the state; and to what
extent Pompeii, which never was a Greek city, employed the sacred idiom
of the divine Plato. We might even add some observations relative to the
accent and the dialect of the Pompeians, who pronounced Latin as the
Neapolitans pronounce Tuscan and with singularly analogous alterations.
But what you are looking for here, hurried reader, is not erudition, but
living movement. Choose then, in these inscriptions, those that teach us
something relative to the manners and