. The cabinets of
young girls, and their toilets, with appropriate paintings, are
disposed along the sides. In this last were found a great quantity of
female ornaments, such as seen in the cut, and others, and the
skeleton of a little dog. At the extremity is seen a semicircular room
adorned with niches, and formerly with statues, mosaics, and marbles.
An altar, on which the sacred fire burned perpetually, rose in the
centre. This is the _sacrarium_. In this secret and sacred place the
most solemn and memorable days of the family were spent in rejoicing;
and here, on birthdays, sacrifices were offered to Juno, or the
Genius, the protector of the new-born child."

The next house is called the House of a Surgeon, because a variety of
surgical instruments were found in it. In number they amounted to
forty; some resembled instruments still in use, others are different
from anything employed by modern surgeons. In many the description of
Celsus is realized, as, for instance, in the specillum, or probe,
which is concave on one side and flat on the other; the scalper
excisorius, in the shape of a lancet-point on one side and of a mallet
on the other; a hook and forceps, used in obstetrical practice. The
latter are said to equal in the convenience and ingenuity of their
construction the best efforts of modern cutlers. Needles, cutting
compasses (circini excisorii), and other instruments were found, all
of the purest brass with bronze handles, and usually enclosed in brass
or boxwood cases.

There is nothing remarkable in the house itself, which contains the
usual apartments, atrium, peristyle, etc., except the paintings. These
consist chiefly of architectural designs, combinations of golden and
bronze-colored columns placed in perspective, surmounted by rich
architraves, elaborate friezes, and decorated cornices, one order
above another. Intermixed are arabesque ornaments, grotesque
paintings, and compartments with figures, all apparently employed in
domestic occupations.

One of them represents a female figure carrying rolls of papyrus to a
man who is seated and intently reading. The method of reading these
rolls or volumes, which were written in transverse columns across the
breadth of the papyrus, is clearly shown here. Behind him a young
woman is seated, playing on the harp. All these figures are placed
under the light architectural designs above described, which seem
intended to surmount a terrace. It is a common prac