Indeed, I think that the true friend of Pompeii should make it a
matter of conscience, on entering the enchanted city, to cast out of
his knowledge all the rubbish that has fallen into it from novels and
travels, and to keep merely the facts of the town's luxurious life
and agonizing death, with such incidents of the eruption as he can
remember from the description of Pliny. These are the spells to
which the sorcery yields, and with these in your thought you can
rehabilitate the city until Ventisei seems to be a _valet de place_ of
the first century, and yourselves a set of blond barbarians to whom he
is showing off the splendors of one of the most brilliant towns of the
empire of Titus. Those sad furrows in the pavement become vocal with
the joyous rattle of chariot-wheels on a sudden, and you prudently
step up on the narrow sidewalks and rub along by the little shops
of wine, and grain, and oil, with which the thrifty voluptuaries of
Pompeii flanked their street-doors. The counters of these shops run
across their fronts, and are pierced with round holes on the top,
through which you see dark depths of oil in the jars below, and not
sullen lumps of ashes; those stately _amphorae_ behind are full of
wine, and in the corners are bags of wheat.

"This house, with a shop on either side, whose is it, XXVI.?"

"It is the house of the great Sallust, my masters. Would you like his
autograph? I know one of his slaves who would sell it."

You are a good deal stared at, naturally, as you pass by, for people
in Pompeii have not much to do, and, besides, a Briton is not an
every-day sight there, as he will be one of these centuries. The skins
of wild beasts are little worn in Pompeii; and those bold-eyed Roman
women think it rather odd that we should like to powder our shaggy
heads with brick-dust. However, these are matters of taste. We, for
our part, cannot repress a feeling of disgust at the loungers in the
street, who, XXVI. tells us, are all going to soak themselves half the
day in the baths yonder; for, if there is in Pompeii one thing more
offensive than another to our savage sense of propriety, it is the
personal cleanliness of the inhabitants. We little know what a change
for the better will be wrought in these people with the lapse of time,
and that they will yet come to wash themselves but once a year, as we
do.

(The reader may go on doing this sort of thing at some length for
himself; and may imagine, if he pleas