mall. But their public buildings are everywhere
marked by the bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In
the little town of Pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand
inhabitants) it is wonderful to see the number and grandeur of their
public buildings.

Another advantage, too, is that in the present case the glorious
scenery around is not shut out, and that unlike the inhabitants of the
Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiian could
contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon
rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with
an atmosphere of golden vapor, below Inarnine and Misenum.

We next saw the temples. Of the temple of AEsculapius little remains
but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the
scales of a serpent. His statue in terra-cotta was found in the cell.
The temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of
fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many
ceppi for statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as
stone, of the most exquisite proportions; its panels are adorned with
figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of workmanship the most
delicate that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects executed by
a Greek artist, who has humanized all the unnatural extravagance of
the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his
country's genius. They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and
their wind uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in
the midst, raised on a high platform and approached by steps, was
decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum
at Porticai. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a
pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, so white
that it dazzles you to look at it.

Thence through other porticoes and labyrinths of walls and columns,
some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The
temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the
hall of public justice with the forests of lofty columns, surround the
Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for whether they
were the altars of the temple of Venus before which they stand the
guide could not tell) occupy the lower end of the Forum. At the upper
end, supported on an elevated platform, stands the temple of Jupiter.
Under the colonnade of its portico