rudely sketched, which the soldiers
traced to pass away the time, while Time was hastily advancing to
swallow them up.

When we place ourselves in the midst of the crossroads from which the
city that remains standing almost entire is seen on all sides, it seems
to us as if we were waiting for somebody, as if the master were coming;
and even the appearance of life which this abode offers makes us feel
more sadly its eternal silence. It is with petrified lava that the
greater part of these houses are built, which are now swallowed up by
other lava. Thus ruins are heaped upon ruins, and tombs upon tombs. This
history of the world, where the epochs are counted from ruin to ruin,
this picture of human life, which is only lighted up by the Volcanoes
that have consumed it, fill the heart with a profound melancholy. How
long man has existed! How long he has suffered and died! Where can we
find his sentiments and his thoughts? Is the air that we breathe in
these ruins impregnated with them, or are they for ever deposited in
heaven where reigns immortality? Some burnt leaves of manuscripts, which
have been found at Herculaneum, and Pompei, and which scholars at
Portici are employed to decipher, are all that remain to give us
information of those unhappy victims, whom the Volcano, that
thunder-bolt of earth, has destroyed. But in passing near those ashes,
which art has succeeded in reanimating, we are afraid to breathe lest a
breath should carry away that dust where noble ideas are perhaps still
imprinted.

The public edifices in the city itself of Pompei, which was one of the
least important of Italy, are yet tolerably fine. The luxury of the
ancients had almost ever some object of public interest for its aim.
Their private houses are very small, and we do not see in them any
studied magnificence, though we may remark a lively taste for the fine
arts in their possessors. Almost the whole interior is adorned with the
most agreeable paintings and mosaic pavements ingeniously worked. On
many of these pavements is written the word _Salve_. This word is placed
on the threshold of the door, and must not be simply considered as a
polite expression, but as an invocation of hospitality. The rooms are
singularly narrow, and badly lighted; the windows do not look on the
street, but on a portico inside the house, as well as a marble court
which it surrounds. In the midst of this court is a cistern, simply
ornamented. It is evident from th