ainters. I recall the fact,
as I pass on, that several paintings, particularly the most important,
were detached, but secured to the wall with iron clamps. It has ever
been noticed that the back of these pictures did not adhere to the
walls--an excellent precaution against dampness. This custom of sawing
off and shifting mural paintings was very ancient. It is known that the
wealthy Romans adorned their houses with works of art borrowed or stolen
from Greece, and all will remember the famous contract of Mummius, who,
in arranging with some merchants to convey to Rome the masterpieces of
Zeuxis and Apelles, stipulated that if they should be lost or damaged on
the way, the merchants should replace them at their own expense.]

[Footnote H: "And how the ancients, even the most unskilful, understood
the right treatment of nude subjects!" said an eminent critic to me, one
day, as he was with me admiring these pictures; "and," he added, "we
know nothing more about it now; _our_ statues are not nude, but
undressed."]

[Footnote I: Recently, Signor Fiorelli has found another bronze
statuette of a bent and crooked Silenus worth both the others.]

[Footnote J: A badly interpreted inscription on the gate of Nola had
led, for a moment, to the belief that the importation of this singular
worship dated back to the early days of the little city; but we now know
that it was introduced by Sylla into the Roman world. Isis was Nature,
the patroness of the Pompeians, who venerated her equally in their
physical Venus. This form of religion, mysterious, symbolical, full of
secrets hidden from the people, as it was; these goddesses with heads of
dogs, wolves, oxen, hawks; the god Onion, the god Garlic, the god Leek;
all that Apuleius tells about it, besides the data furnished by the
Pompeian excavations, the recovered bottle-brushes, the basins, the
knives, the tripods, the cymbals, the citherae, etc.,--were worth the
trouble of examination and study.

Upon the door of the temple, a strange inscription announced that
Numerius Popidius, the son of Numerius, had, at his own expense, rebuilt
the temple of Isis, thrown down by an earthquake, and that, in reward
for his liberality, the decurions had admitted him gratuitously to their
college at the age of six years. The antiquaries, or some of them, at
least, finding this age improbable, have read it sixty instead of six,
forgetting that there then existed two kinds of decurions, the
_ornamenta