the crisping winds that hover around its bosom, so glowing and
so various are the hues which it takes from the rosy clouds, so fragrant
are the perfumes which the breezes from the land scatter over its
depths. From such a sea might you well believe that Aphrodite rose to
take the empire of the earth.

'It is still early for the bath,' said the Greek, who was the creature
of every poetical impulse; 'let us wander from the crowded city, and
look upon the sea while the noon yet laughs along its billows.'

'With all my heart,' said Clodius; 'and the bay, too, is always the most
animated part of the city.'

Pompeii was the miniature of the civilization of that age. Within the
narrow compass of its walls was contained, as it were, a specimen of
every gift which luxury offered to power. In its minute but glittering
shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theatre, its
circus--in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice, of
its people, you beheld a model of the whole empire. It was a toy, a
plaything, a showbox, in which the gods seemed pleased to keep the
representation of the great monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards
hid from time, to give to the wonder of posterity--the moral of the
maxim, that under the sun there is nothing new.

Crowded in the glassy bay were the vessels of commerce and the gilded
galleys for the pleasures of the rich citizens. The boats of the
fishermen glided rapidly to and fro; and afar off you saw the tall masts
of the fleet under the command of Pliny. Upon the shore sat a Sicilian
who, with vehement gestures and flexile features, was narrating to a
group of fishermen and peasants a strange tale of shipwrecked mariners
and friendly dolphins--just as at this day, in the modern neighborhood,
you may hear upon the Mole of Naples.

Drawing his comrade from the crowd, the Greek bent his steps towards a
solitary part of the beach, and the two friends, seated on a small crag
which rose amidst the smooth pebbles, inhaled the voluptuous and cooling
breeze, which dancing over the waters, kept music with its invisible
feet. There was, perhaps, something in the scene that invited them to
silence and reverie. Clodius, shading his eyes from the burning sky,
was calculating the gains of the last week; and the Greek, leaning upon
his hand, and shrinking not from that sun--his nation's tutelary
deity--with whose fluent light of poesy, and joy, and love, his own
veins were f