ercising the arts of their calling. Here one man was holding out
ribands to a fair dame from the country; another man was vaunting to a
stout farmer the excellence of his shoes; a third, a kind of
stall-restaurateur, still so common in the Italian cities, was supplying
many a hungry mouth with hot messes from his small and itinerant stove,
while--contrast strongly typical of the mingled bustle and intellect of
the time--close by, a schoolmaster was expounding to his puzzled pupils
the elements of the Latin grammar.' A gallery above the portico, which
was ascended by small wooden staircases, had also its throng; though, as
here the immediate business of the place was mainly carried on, its
groups wore a more quiet and serious air.

Every now and then the crowd below respectfully gave way as some senator
swept along to the Temple of Jupiter (which filled up one side of the
forum, and was the senators' hall of meeting), nodding with ostentatious
condescension to such of his friends or clients as he distinguished
amongst the throng. Mingling amidst the gay dresses of the better
orders you saw the hardy forms of the neighboring farmers, as they made
their way to the public granaries. Hard by the temple you caught a view
of the triumphal arch, and the long street beyond swarming with
inhabitants; in one of the niches of the arch a fountain played,
cheerily sparkling in the sunbeams; and above its cornice rose the
bronzed and equestrian statue of Caligula, strongly contrasting the gay
summer skies. Behind the stalls of the money-changers was that building
now called the Pantheon; and a crowd of the poorer Pompeians passed
through the small vestibule which admitted to the interior, with
panniers under their arms, pressing on towards a platform, placed
between two columns, where such provisions as the priests had rescued
from sacrifice were exposed for sale.

At one of the public edifices appropriated to the business of the city,
workmen were employed upon the columns, and you heard the noise of their
labor every now and then rising above the hum of the multitude: the
columns are unfinished to this day!

All, then, united, nothing could exceed in variety the costumes, the
ranks, the manners, the occupations of the crowd--nothing could exceed
the bustle, the gaiety, the animation--where pleasure and commerce,
idleness and labor, avarice and ambition, mingled in one gulf their
motley rushing, yet harmonius, streams.

Facin