vases of flowers, placed upon pedestals: while, under the
colonnade, to the right and left, were doors admitting to bedrooms, to a
second triclinium, or eating-room (for the ancients generally
appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer, and one
for winter--or, perhaps, one for ordinary, the other for festive,
occasions); and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet, dignified by
the name of library--for a very small room was sufficient to contain the
few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable collection of
books.

At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the
house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre
thereof was not in that case a garden, but might be, perhaps, adorned
with a fountain, or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to
the tablinum, was generally another eating-room, on either side of which
were bedrooms, and, perhaps, a picture-saloon, or pinacotheca. These
apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually
adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very
much resembling the peristyle, only usually longer. This was the proper
viridarium, or garden, being commonly adorned with a fountain, or
statues, and a profusion of gay flowers: at its extreme end was the
gardener's house; on either side, beneath the colonnade, were sometimes,
if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.

At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being
built only above a small part of the house, and containing rooms for the
slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of
Rome, which generally contained the principal eating-room (or
caenaculum) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were
ordinarily of small size; for in those delightful climes they received
any extraordinary number of visitors in the peristyle (or portico), the
hall, or the garden; and even their banquet-rooms, however elaborately
adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive
proportions; for the intellectual ancients, being fond of society, not
of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large
dinner-rooms were not so necessary with them as with us. But the suite
of rooms seen at once from the entrance, must have had a very imposing
effect: you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the
tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and (i