but then the malice of the elements begins
anew, and rain and sun draw the life out of tints which the volcano
failed to obliterate. In nearly all cases they could be preserved
by throwing a roof above the walls, and it is a wonder that the
Government does not take this slight trouble to save them.

Among the frescos which told no story but their own, we were most
pleased with one in a delicately painted little bed-chamber. This
represented an alarmed and furtive man, whom we at once pronounced The
Belated Husband, opening a door with a night-latch. Nothing could have
been better than this miserable wretch's cowardly haste and cautious
noiselessness in applying his key; apprehension sat upon his brow,
confusion dwelt in his guilty eye. He had been out till two o'clock
in the morning, electioneering for Pansa, the friend of the people
("Pansa, and Roman gladiators," "Pansa, and Christians to the Beasts,"
was the platform), and he had left his _placens uxor_ at home alone
with the children, and now within this door that _placens uxor_
awaited him!

V.

You have read, no doubt, of their discovering, a year or two since,
in making an excavation in a Pompeian street, the molds of four human
bodies, three women and a man, who fell down, blind and writhing, in
the storm of fire eighteen hundred years ago; whose shape the settling
and hardening ashes took; whose flesh wasted away, and whose bones lay
there in the hollow of the matrix till the cunning of this time found
them, and, pouring liquid plaster round the skeletons, clothed them
with human form again, and drew them forth into the world once more.
There are many things in Pompeii which bring back the gay life of the
city, but nothing which so vividly reports the terrible manner of her
death as these effigies of the creatures that actually shared it. The
man in the last struggle has thrown himself upon his back and taken
his doom sturdily--there is a sublime calm in his rigid figure. The
women lie upon their faces, their limbs tossed and distorted, their
drapery tangled and heaped about them, and in every fibre you see how
hard they died. One presses her face into her handkerchief to draw
one last breath unmixed with scalding steam; another's arms are wildly
thrown abroad to clutch at help; another's hand is appealingly raised,
and on her slight fingers you see the silver hoops with which her poor
dead vanity adorned them.

The guide takes you aside from the street